Rarewares 2007 redesign (from Vorbis thread), From Topic ID: 53148 Options

[Spikey]

Very, very interesting. Dare I say that the majority of posts in this thread are what Emmett was criticising- people talking about minutiae and the average person is totally jumping off the ship because they want an easy encoder to use.


I like vlada's post. I use Ogg Vorbis for my website, Sierra Music Central, and use the latest Blacksword Lancer build.

I think this is one of the major problems. There are some people (just average users) who read about Ogg Vorbis, they heard it sounds better then MP3 and they want to try it. So they get to the official webpage and they hope to get an official tool to convert their CDs to Ogg Vorbis. But what do they find? An outdated CLI encoder and obviously they have no idea how to use it. Then there are links to many programs and they have no idea which one to choose.

Many people need to be told what to do. Use program X to create, tag and play the Ogg Vorbis files. This is all what they need. They are confused if there are more choices.

Ogg Vorbis format has all the advantages you can imagine. So why only a few people (including me) use it? Wrong marketing and missing easy to use tools and guides. All the development is not concentrated in one places and there are no good informations for end users. If you want to be successful, you have to concentrate on end users.

Totally agree! It's INSANE to have such an easy to use program (you literally drag and drop with the Lancer build, way easier than using LAME, or at least as easy as LAME/EAC!) put in the 'too hard' basket and dumped because instead of using the best, most highly optimised Ogg encoder builds, people are still using encoders from 2003 or can only find an old download or a harder to use encoder.


To be honest, I put some of the blame on RareWares- why the hell does their Ogg page look like that. I tried navigating it to find some Mac decoders for a composer who visited my game music site and used Mac's. There wasn't a separate section for differing OS platforms, and obviously worst of all the encoders weren't ranked in any order, meaning the average person was lost in a sea of encoders/decoders. Totally useless.

All the 2004 or older builds should be removed (2005 or older, really) and the Lancer builds should be linked to at the head of the page. After all, they've been proven the best, right?

Only reason I used OggDropXPd for so long was because it was very hard (even for me, someone who searches hard for such info) to find information about Vorbis encoders, and it was only from searching these forums and Wiki that I turned up some info. Incidentally, Wiki's are really out of date last time I checked codec info (MP3/Ogg).

My main rival site, QuestStudios, uses Cool Edit with some 2002/2003 Ogg encoder, I'm fairly sure. The assumption is, Ogg is Ogg. If we don't show the new encoders with pride/ease of access, what else are people to think.

I don't understand. RareWares should limit the number of encoders/decoders to 10, or less, ranked with ease of use, platforms, etc. That would make it dead simple to figure out for the 'average joe' user and if people started using Lancer, you'd be amazed how many people would ditch crappy Ogg encoders/other encoders, I'm sure.

I also agree about being careful about TOS #8- I've had long held views about Ogg qualities, and they're slowly being shattered (I use q7). That to me is where the hard part of codecs should be, deciding which one is best, testing them, not figuring out which encoder to use because there's a zillion of the same one, with no rhyme nor reason as to which one is preferable over any other.

Sorry to go on so long, I feel strongly about this.

- Spike

[naylor83]

One suggestion for RareWares:

Split the page into 2 sections, recent/current releases, and prior releases. Put some whitespace between the sections. Give each section an easy to understand title, e.g. "Current Releases" and "Prior Releases".

Thanks for the suggestion. A good idea if you ask me.

The site is getting a new design as you already know (I'm working with RJ on that part) and he/john/we will also be dividing the download pages into more digestible bites, but as far as I know, john and/or RJ haven't yet figured out how to divide the pages yet, so I'm sure they'll appreciate your suggestion and any others' for that matter.

This post has been edited by naylor83: Apr 13 2007, 01:54