Ogg Vorbis in The Guardian (UK) Options

[Tomb]

I, like many, use the ogg vorbis encoder. This article in today's Guardian (UK) may be of interest. In summary the writer states that ogg is a music file format without support or hope. Any thoughts?

[LANjackal]

If you look at the Top Ten Reviews list of portable audio players, 10 out of 10 play MP3 files out of the box, nine play WMA and only one plays Ogg: the Cowan iAudio X5. (The iRiver H10 has dropped Ogg support.) Of course, only two of these devices play AAC files, but one of those is the Apple iPod, which has the majority of the market.

It would be nice if all those crooning about the impending death of MP3 and WMA did not blatantly ignore the above fact. They both have wider support than anything else. MP3 isn't going away due to AAC or WMA any more than .txt files will disappear due to ODF/MS's Office formats.

However, Ogg still carries potential risks, because there is no guarantee that it doesn't infringe someone's patents.

True, but if that's really the case, how is it that FLAC is the most widely supported lossless format without any patent/IP issues? Or is that because its development predates that of formats from incumbents (WMA Lossless, ALAC)?

I have nothing against Ogg, the tests clearly show it's an excellent format. Unfortunately, achieving widespread support is more than a simple academic exercise that produces the best quality output (a point lost on many developers). From my viewpoint, FLAC rose to the top in the lossless category primarily because it was actively developed and promoted before similar incumbent projects (until just recently, lossless was pretty much ignored by MS and Apple, MS had a format in name only).

Ogg, on the other hand, is "just another" (in the marketing sense) lossy format competing against strongly entrenched MP3, WMA and AAC which are natively supported by the 2 primary preinstalled media players on the market. Neither of those 2 natively support Ogg, and they're unlikely ever to, either. The average user has to go pretty far out of his way to use the format, relative to the Big 3 codecs. I won't even get into the tagging/frontend issues, since the average person investigating the format probably wouldn't get that far.

As harsh as it may seem, while the codec will continue to exist and (sporadically, it seems) developed, I can't say I see much hope for it becoming mainstream either. However, I don't think it will suffer the same fate of being consigned to the abyss like MPC (those who say otherwise are just in denial), RealAudio, and ATRAC3

This post has been edited by LANjackal: Apr 19 2007, 19:35

[rjamorim]

True, but if that's really the case, how is it that FLAC is the most widely supported lossless format without any patent/IP issues?

Maybe because it didn't become mainstream enough yet for interested (mischievous?) people to try to find patents inside it?

And if someone already found a patent he owns, he might be waiting for larger market acceptance. If he sued now, he would probably be able to catch nullsoft and a couple other big fish. He should at least until Apple includes it in Leopard, if he really wants profit.

If only the patent world was that linear and predictable as you paint it

and now we are waiting for SV8. Just take a look here http://trac.musepack.net/trac/timeline

We are waiting for SV8 since 2000.

But it wouldn't make any difference if it arrived now, anyway. Musepack stagnated while all other formats improved by leaps and bounds. It's no longer the undisputed champion at either quality or encoding speed. It's just an obscure format with shitty support.

but is perfect for PC playback

...just like any other format out there. Yes, it is faster, but that should only be noticeable if your computer is 10 years old or older.

Besides, it's not that perfect for PC playback. If I take MPC files to a friend's computer, we'll have to start by hunting software that supports it, since chances are nearly 100% that his software won't. If I take MP3s, chances are nearly 100% that we'll start enjoying music right away.

This post has been edited by rjamorim: Apr 20 2007, 00:07

[jcoalson]

True, but if that's really the case, how is it that FLAC is the most widely supported lossless format without any patent/IP issues?

Maybe because it didn't become mainstream enough yet for interested (mischievous?) people to try to find patents inside it?

And if someone already found a patent he owns, he might be waiting for larger market acceptance. If he sued now, he would probably be able to catch nullsoft and a couple other big fish. He should at least until Apple includes it in Leopard, if he really wants profit.

practically every method in FLAC is also in ALAC, which FLAC predates by several years. so if anyone is submarining then even Apple is not a big enough fish.

[rjamorim]

True, but if that's really the case, how is it that FLAC is the most widely supported lossless format without any patent/IP issues?

Maybe because it didn't become mainstream enough yet for interested (mischievous?) people to try to find patents inside it?

And if someone already found a patent he owns, he might be waiting for larger market acceptance. If he sued now, he would probably be able to catch nullsoft and a couple other big fish. He should at least until Apple includes it in Leopard, if he really wants profit.

practically every method in FLAC is also in ALAC, which FLAC predates by several years. so if anyone is submarining then even Apple is not a big enough fish.

Yeah, yeah. The difference is that Apple never released source code or specifications on ALAC. For someone to create a case against it, he'll either have to subpoena Apple into showing him the sources, or base his allegations on a reverse engineered decoder.