www.cdindex.org is what you're looking for. It's flexible, open, and nice. Unfortunately, it's not terribly complete, and also (mostly because of that) doesn't have a very large database yet.
That's my usual reaction whenever anyone suggests anything like this. You DO NOT convert from one lossy format to another. You don't even want to reencode something in the same lossy format. Both are BAD. I'm not going to talk about how much you'd lose doing this conversion (though I could) because you SHOULDN'T EVEN THINK OF DOING IT.
Ugh. Glad I got that out of my system. Remember: reencoding in lossy formats is always a bad idea, no matter what.
Winamp and XMMS plugins are both available (see www.vorbis.com for downloads)
As for an encoder - try OggEnc. The most recent version is in vorbis CVS as of yesterday. I've also got a hacked up windows version lying around at http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~msmith/oggenc-win32.z ip (which is a little out of date, but works well enough)
We've talked to the winamp guys, and they're receptive to the vorbis plugin being included in the standard winamp distribution - but it isn't in there yet, and I don't know when it will be. Probably once vorbis hits 1.0
The vorbis format allows for a much nicer, more flexible tagging system than ID3. In theory, you could have a title string several gigabytes long! (no, I wouldn't expect anything to actually WORK with that;)
Most of the encoders floating around (but not all, if you get older versions (like the beta1 versions that are still on the official site)) support tagging files with these, and most of the players will display it (at least in a limited way - right now, winamp and xmms (for example) only display "artist - title", without any way of customising the display.)
I think someone is working on this. How good it currently is I don't know.
There are also plugins available for most of the other popular windows players (winamp and sonique, at least) - I believe the sonique one will be distributed with sonique in the next version, and people have been in contact with the winamp guys about doing the same there (not sure of the status of that).
Many other companies have pledged support for vorbis in their products - being mainstream won't be a major problem.
The Vorbis format actually consists of two layers - the low-level vorbis packets, and a sync/framing layer called Ogg (which isn't vorbis-specific).
Ogg is designed to allow seeking to sample precision, and indeed the current library can do exactly that (the players only seek to a given time, rather than a given sample, but that's a limitation of the players rather than the format). All the info is there, and the library gives you everything you need to use it.
Ogg also allows for multiplexing of streams (so an (as yet non-existent) ogg video codec could give you one stream, and vorbis give you another, all within the same file, and all with the syncing info you need.
I suggest you try again with beta2 (once it's easily available - which I believe will be within the next day or two). There were a number of known bugs in beta1 (which you were probably using) - and quite apart from these fixes, there have been a LOT of improvements.
Beta2 will also (as mentioned in the article) have more modes (at different bitrates) available, so you'll be able to do a fairer test.
Most of the testing is done with (informal) listening tests, over a fairly wide body of different material.
OK - this is pretty cool. I can't say I'm much of an audiophile at all. I can barely hear the difference between a CD and mp3 even for the cases where mp3 breaks down pretty horribly.
So, you basically want two things. Something like mp3.com for vorbis. I suspect that, should the format become popular - and I think it will, mp3.com and so on will branch out and have seperate sections for other audio formats. I don't think that this will be a problem, really. Once the format is established, this will happen.
Secondly, you want mac tools. THIS is easy. The vorbis source is really well written. I 'ported' the code to win32. It took about half an hour, most of which was struggling with MSVC. The code is VERY portable. Once it was compiling, decoding worked perfectly. Encoding was somewhat more difficult, due to a small obscure bug - but that now works perfectly too. Porting to a mac should be comparable - I doubt it'd take more than a day for someone with any knowledge about mac programming.
Mac tools are waiting only for a developer with a few hours of time on his/her hands. If you know one - get him/her to contact the vorbis-dev list. We DO want vorbis encoders and players on every platform we can.
Slashdot Mirror
www.cdindex.org is what you're looking for. It's flexible, open, and nice. Unfortunately, it's not terribly complete, and also (mostly because of that) doesn't have a very large database yet.
Ow ow ow!
That's my usual reaction whenever anyone suggests anything like this. You DO NOT convert from one lossy format to another. You don't even want to reencode something in the same lossy format. Both are BAD. I'm not going to talk about how much you'd lose doing this conversion (though I could) because you SHOULDN'T EVEN THINK OF DOING IT.
Ugh. Glad I got that out of my system. Remember: reencoding in lossy formats is always a bad idea, no matter what.
Expected CPU usage (long term): similar to mp3.
Current CPU usage (libvorbis is more or less unoptimised): much more than mp3 (2-4 times as much cpu power, in my experience, depending on cpu)
Winamp and XMMS plugins are both available (see www.vorbis.com for downloads)
z ip (which is a little out of date, but works well enough)
As for an encoder - try OggEnc. The most recent version is in vorbis CVS as of yesterday. I've also got a hacked up windows version lying around at http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~msmith/oggenc-win32.
We've talked to the winamp guys, and they're receptive to the vorbis plugin being included in the standard winamp distribution - but it isn't in there yet, and I don't know when it will be. Probably once vorbis hits 1.0
;)
The vorbis format allows for a much nicer, more flexible tagging system than ID3. In theory, you could have a title string several gigabytes long! (no, I wouldn't expect anything to actually WORK with that
Most of the encoders floating around (but not all, if you get older versions (like the beta1 versions that are still on the official site)) support tagging files with these, and most of the players will display it (at least in a limited way - right now, winamp and xmms (for example) only display "artist - title", without any way of customising the display.)
I think someone is working on this. How good it currently is I don't know.
There are also plugins available for most of the other popular windows players (winamp and sonique, at least) - I believe the sonique one will be distributed with sonique in the next version, and people have been in contact with the winamp guys about doing the same there (not sure of the status of that).
Many other companies have pledged support for vorbis in their products - being mainstream won't be a major problem.
The Vorbis format actually consists of two layers - the low-level vorbis packets, and a sync/framing layer called Ogg (which isn't vorbis-specific).
Ogg is designed to allow seeking to sample precision, and indeed the current library can do exactly that (the players only seek to a given time, rather than a given sample, but that's a limitation of the players rather than the format). All the info is there, and the library gives you everything you need to use it.
Ogg also allows for multiplexing of streams (so an (as yet non-existent) ogg video codec could give you one stream, and vorbis give you another, all within the same file, and all with the syncing info you need.
I suggest you try again with beta2 (once it's easily available - which I believe will be within the next day or two). There were a number of known bugs in beta1 (which you were probably using) - and quite apart from these fixes, there have been a LOT of improvements.
Beta2 will also (as mentioned in the article) have more modes (at different bitrates) available, so you'll be able to do a fairer test.
Most of the testing is done with (informal) listening tests, over a fairly wide body of different material.
OK - this is pretty cool. I can't say I'm much of an audiophile at all. I can barely hear the difference between a CD and mp3 even for the cases where mp3 breaks down pretty horribly.
So, you basically want two things. Something like mp3.com for vorbis. I suspect that, should the format become popular - and I think it will, mp3.com and so on will branch out and have seperate sections for other audio formats. I don't think that this will be a problem, really. Once the format is established, this will happen.
Secondly, you want mac tools. THIS is easy. The vorbis source is really well written.
I 'ported' the code to win32. It took about half an hour, most of which was struggling with MSVC. The code is VERY portable. Once it was compiling, decoding worked perfectly. Encoding was somewhat more difficult, due to a small obscure bug - but that now works perfectly too. Porting to a mac should be comparable - I doubt it'd take more than a day for someone with any knowledge about mac programming.
Mac tools are waiting only for a developer with a few hours of time on his/her hands. If you know one - get him/her to contact the vorbis-dev list. We DO want vorbis encoders and players on every platform we can.
Michael