Sorry for the bad connectivity - the Web Server has actually worked through the/. effect at low load without any problems. However, it's sitting behind several firewalls, which probably interpreted the massive number of connection requests as a denial-of-service attack and throttled the pipe. Also, we are in Australia, so it all happened in the middle of the night.
As for the discussion about the choice of encapsulation format - it probably just burns down to having to make a decision at some point and our decision was strongly influenced by open source considerations at the time. We haven't actually seriously tried putting CMML into QuickTime or MPEG-4, though their hierarchical format and the necessity to pre-process files before they could be streamed via rtp/rtsp indicated potential issues with serialisation and dynamic composition on the server side. When I mention streaming, I mean live streaming over rtp/rtsp and live inserting clip tags into the stream.
Every encapsulation format has its advantages and disadvantages. We preferred Ogg and its open codecs because it allows streaming without having to manipulate the file format. Ogg is flat and sequential, while QuickTime is hierarchical. With Annodex, you can embed annotations on the fly while streaming.
Also, there are development tools available as open source code on all platforms for Ogg, while QuickTime is not available on Linux, which is where we started developing.
BTW: With Annodex, links are also embedded directly in the file. External files are used for authoring and as a textual representation of the content of the video for search engines to use.
SMIL is a language to author multimedia experiences (it's "Interaction Language", not "Integration Language"). Although SMIL 2 has metadata in it, SMIL 2 is so complicated that it's not generally used. I've not seen search engines crawling SMIL files and delivering clips as matches!
When HTML was started, SGML was around and did all that HTML did, too - and lots more. Do you remember SGML?
Ever tried making your own DVD and publish it on a Web server with links to other Web content? This technology allows that sort of thing to happen, but with an open technology, not a proprietary solution.
Also, it is not actually creating smaller chunks from audio-visual files - the files stay intact! There is a separate language to create the markup (just like HTML for text pages) and once that is created, everything else is automated - also the table-of-content-generation process.
Annodex is a generic encapsulation format and allows for other codecs to be annotated and indexed, too.
Also, with the support of media frameworks, authoring tools can transcode from any format to Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry for the bad connectivity - the Web Server has actually worked through the /. effect at low load without any problems. However, it's sitting behind several firewalls, which probably interpreted the massive number of connection requests as a denial-of-service attack and throttled the pipe. Also, we are in Australia, so it all happened in the middle of the night.
As for the discussion about the choice of encapsulation format - it probably just burns down to having to make a decision at some point and our decision was strongly influenced by open source considerations at the time. We haven't actually seriously tried putting CMML into QuickTime or MPEG-4, though their hierarchical format and the necessity to pre-process files before they could be streamed via rtp/rtsp indicated potential issues with serialisation and dynamic composition on the server side. When I mention streaming, I mean live streaming over rtp/rtsp and live inserting clip tags into the stream.
silvia
There is nothing magic about HTTP and HTML either - its simplicity made it a winner.
Every encapsulation format has its advantages and disadvantages. We preferred Ogg and its open codecs because it allows streaming without having to manipulate the file format. Ogg is flat and sequential, while QuickTime is hierarchical. With Annodex, you can embed annotations on the fly while streaming.
Also, there are development tools available as open source code on all platforms for Ogg, while QuickTime is not available on Linux, which is where we started developing.
BTW: With Annodex, links are also embedded directly in the file. External files are used for authoring and as a textual representation of the content of the video for search engines to use.
SMIL is a language to author multimedia experiences (it's "Interaction Language", not "Integration Language"). Although SMIL 2 has metadata in it, SMIL 2 is so complicated that it's not generally used. I've not seen search engines crawling SMIL files and delivering clips as matches!
When HTML was started, SGML was around and did all that HTML did, too - and lots more. Do you remember SGML?
Hmm, and the Web was Yet Another Hypertext System at the time. All technology has to prove its value.
Ever tried making your own DVD and publish it on a Web server with links to other Web content? This technology allows that sort of thing to happen, but with an open technology, not a proprietary solution.
Also, it is not actually creating smaller chunks from audio-visual files - the files stay intact! There is a separate language to create the markup (just like HTML for text pages) and once that is created, everything else is automated - also the table-of-content-generation process.
Annodex is a generic encapsulation format and allows for other codecs to be annotated and indexed, too. Also, with the support of media frameworks, authoring tools can transcode from any format to Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis.