Slashdot Mirror
Ogg Vorbis in Quicktime 6.0.2
elohim writes "The kind souls at QT Components have released an ogg vorbis component that allows playback of oggs in quicktime 6.0.2 and itunes. Hopefully we'll see ogg encoding integrated in itunes soon. This is a big step forward for vorbis fans! I can hardly wait to pick up a shiny, new powerbook and start blasting my oggs!" CT Yeah, this is a dupe. Whatever. It's the holidays- nothing else is happening ;)
qtcomponents is one of two projects to play oggs of which i'm aware. the other project is at http://illadvised.com/~jordy/ perhaps the previous story was about jordy's plugin. regardless, it's good to have a little competition. i think i submitted this story a day or two before this story appeared: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/25/ 1532236&mode=thread&tid=141
The reports of Apple including ogg support in iTunes were "delusional", or more accurately just misinformed. What had actually happened was that the Quicktime Component that supports Ogg (not developed by Apple) had hooked in with iTunes as well. This update just makes the component compatible with the (as far as I know) latest version of Quicktime, 6.0.2.
You're right. We could play Ogg-Vorbis files in Quicktime and iTunes before, using a different component.
So the headline should read "Now _this_ component can do what you've been doing for a while."
no, there is no ogg player for the ipod as of yet.
Do you really need one? In iTunes you can play Ogg files. You can also convert them to MP3's by selecting the song, and using the "Convert selection to MP3" item in the Advanced menu. Then just drag the song to your iPod in the source panel.
+ Open-source/free/whatever: You don't care about this, apparently, but the fact is that if you don't pay for your MP3 encoder/decoder (or if the company that makes your MP3 encoder/decoder doesn't pay for it), you are "stealing" if you use it. MP3 is patented. If you create an MP3 encoder/decoder, you are legally required to pay FhG/Thomson for every encoder/decoder you put out. If you don't care about this, fine, but if Apple doesn't have to pay for each piece of MP3-enabled software/hardware they put out, YOU save money. I guess Apple wouldn't phase out MP3 support totally any time soon, but eventually if they did, you would indeed be paying a lower price for your iPod or whatever.
+ Better quality at lower bitrates: Like MP3Pro and (i think) WMA, Xiph has put extra care into lower bitrates in Vorbis. Personally this doesn't matter to me, or the majority of audiophiles, but this can be very beneficial to streaming (i.e. "radio") broadcasts. Remember that bitrate != quality.
+ Bitrate peeling: Bitrate peeling has been planned in Vorbis for a while, and recently they actually implemented the feature. As i understand it, what this essentially does is: say you have some Vorbis files of a given bitrate; let's say (as an example) 160 kbps. Now, let's say you have to stick these Vorbis files on a CD somewhere, or you want to put out a sample on your low-bandwidth Website, or whatever, and you need to make these Vorbis files smaller in size. Before you only had one option: to decode these to Wave, and then re-encode them at a lower bitrate. This isn't a matter of just taking out the "higher" parts of the file. It actually works on the already-encoded parts when you re-encode. That leads to worse quality. To put this into perspective, let me use the example of an MP3, as that's what you seem to be used to. If you rip a Wave off your audio CD, and then convert it into 160 kbps MP3, it's going to be higher quality than that same file that has been ripped to Wave, converted to 192 kbps MP3, decoded back to Wave, and then re-encoded to 160 kbps MP3. Get the idea? So, with bitrate peeling, you essentially skip the decode/re-encode stages, and you just remove the "higher" parts of the file to make them actually the same quality as they would have been if you had encoded to that bitrate in the first place. Confusing, but hopefully you get the idea.
+ Custom tags: MP3 zealots will, of course, claim that MP3's ID3v2 supports custom tags (i.e., you can create any tag you want and put any information into it that you want), but the fact is that very few MP3 decoders (players) actually support this feature. Vorbis, however, natively supports custom tags. You can create any tag you want, and put anything in it, and any respectable media players (for example, Winamp, if you're a Windows user; not sure about Mac/UNIX) should be able to show your custom tags. Maybe this isn't an important feature for some, but i personally like to have as much information as possible on a track. I want a time of encoding, i want to know who encoded it, and with what program, and at what quality. I want to know the EXACT date of release, not just a year. Again, maybe you don't care about that.
+ Better quality: And, of course, Vorbis is designed to be higher quality than MP3. Generally (if the world is a semi-perfect place), a Vorbis file of any given song should be of higher quality than an MP3 of the same song at the same bitrate. (Remember that "bitrate" is a measure of file size, not file quality.) For the sake of simplicity, assume you have a "quality" scale of 1 to 10, 10 being an exact duplicate of the original song. If you have an MP3 that is a 7 on the scale, and an Ogg that is a 7 on the scale, the Ogg should usually be about 20% smaller in file size (this will, of course, vary widely).
There are other, less talked-about features of Vorbis, but those are the main benefits.