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World's First Large-Scale Ogg Theora Stream
Ur@eus writes "The GNOME European Users and Developers conference is currently underway in Kristansand, Norway. The whole conference is available live online as an Ogg Theora stream (the videos of the talks are also archived). This is very exciting as it is a proof of concept that it is possible to do high quality streaming using a fully free format today. The stream is done using the Fluendo streaming server software which will be released under the GPL in a few months. You find information on how to view the streams at the GUADEC streaming website."
What concept needed to be proved? Does the freeness of a codec affect its scalability?
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Sadly, most of the streaming video is still reliant on Real from my experience. However, most places now have quicktime/mpeg alternatives. Does anyone know if Apple's new codec which will be released with Panther is planning on being Open Source? It is supposedly going to be able to be used for video streams.
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Don't say it, show it. What statistics if any are available for this event?
Unfortunately, the guy who was closest to getting there was stuck at his office, in spite of Kristiansand being his hometown.
That's too bad, but now I can actually try to have them look at the stream instead, and even failing that, there's the archive.
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Why didn't they multicast? Wouldn't that have solved the bandwidth issues?
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is that most MP3 players out there don't support it. Generally, people go with technology that is the most useable, which, in this case, isn't Ogg. It's MP3. This stream hasn't solved the primary problem with streaming Real Audio: the annoying buffering stops. Until something can outdo that, it won't become popular.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
There was some discussion about video policy for Wikipedia. The conclusion was that they were waiting on a workable streaming free and open codec... so this should be pretty big news for them.
Now to find video illustrations for the articles on the sixty-nine and the reverse cowgirl...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Quite frankly, however, nobody has actually sought to place video on the Wikipedia yet. I hope it will happen soon, but right now there's been a fair bit of talk but no action from any contributors.
As to your suggested topics, see the last section on legalitiesin the discussion paper. There's a whole pile of extra paperwork you need to keep track of to legally post videos of the kind you wish to post...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This might be because marketers aren't particularly interested in straightening it out. There are open STANDARDS and open SOURCE. Not the same thing.
Open source just means the source is available for public consumption, but these days it also implies under some kind of license such as GPL or BSD that would permit modification and redistribution. There are apps with source that aren't like that. Some compilers, for exmaple, include the source to all libraries, but don't permit you to redistribute that source.
Open standards are standards for anything, like video formats (MPEG-2/4, H.264, VC-9), communication busses (IEEE-1394/Firewire, USB) and so on. They are considered open because they are available to ANYONE that gets a license, no discrimination permitted, and under single terms. They are standards because they are controlled by a standards body, not by a company. So updates can only be made through the standards body, and then are available to everyone.
Both are ways where no one gets locked out from changes, and a company can't choose to play favourites with someone. The critical difference is open standards need not be free, and many aren't. An open standard can have a licensing fee, it just needs to be one that is reasonable and non-discriminitory. So long as it's not too expensive and anyone can obtain the same license, it qualifies.
The problem is that the OSS community is quite good at ignoring licensing fees on open standards. They happily implement software that deals with MPEG-4, MP3, and so on and never pay any licensing (perhaps never realising it is licensed). Now this is generally allowed to happen since it not for profit, and source only distributions are often exempted as academic works.
That doesn not mean that licenses aren't legally needed, or that they won't come for them in the event of commercial works. Anyone distributing MPEG-4 content in a large or commercial setting had better pay the use fee (you have to pay per hour of content or per disc for MPEG-4) or they'll probably be after you.
The OGG stuff that Xiph makes is free and open source, not an open standard, so it is free of charge to use. That's the reason for excitement.
When you get right down to it, Vorbis isn't really better than licensed formats like AAC or WMA. You can make tests Vorbis wins, you can make tests the others win. Ultimately, all new standards are pretty good, and are good at different things. The reason that Vorbis is cool is that there are NO fees to use it. Just implement it and distribute it and don't worry.
That's why it's becomming popular with games. If they wanted MP3 music, well that was something they had to pay for, since they were implementing a decoder. Some with the newer licensed standards. Vorbis, on the other hand, is free and sounds roughly the same. Great, keeps costs down and consumers don't notice any difference.