>> You know that Ogg is only a container format, not a codec, right? ;-)
> 
> I was told by a ffmpeg developer that ogg is quite a crap container format, 
> and that Matroska is way better. Of course, you're free to use it with 
> Theora and Vorbis (the codecs usually used with Ogg).

I've read the Ogg spec. Looks OK to me.

(Then again, the only other container format I know of is IFF...)

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
> > You can Google the codec up yourself. I'm too lazy. Is Vorbis a (video)
> > codec?

> Vorbis is audio. Theora is video. Ogg is container.

  And a codec is a piece of software, so it's nothing of those.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   And a codec is a piece of software, so it's nothing of those.

Really? I thought the term "codec" refers to the data format, and the 
algorithm for producing/consuming it? (I.e., the specification document 
is the codec, the software is an "implementation of" the codec, and any 
files using it are "uses of" the codec.)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   And a codec is a piece of software, so it's nothing of those.

> Really? I thought the term "codec" refers to the data format, and the 
> algorithm for producing/consuming it? (I.e., the specification document 
> is the codec, the software is an "implementation of" the codec, and any 
> files using it are "uses of" the codec.)

    "A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or
    decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a
    portmanteau (a blending of two or more words) of
    'compressor-decompressor' or, more accurately, 'coder-decoder'."

  It's a piece of software (or hardware, if we are technical).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>>>   And a codec is a piece of software, so it's nothing of those.
> 
>> Really? I thought the term "codec" refers to the data format, and the 
>> algorithm for producing/consuming it? (I.e., the specification document 
>> is the codec, the software is an "implementation of" the codec, and any 
>> files using it are "uses of" the codec.)
> 
>     "A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or
>     decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a
>     portmanteau (a blending of two or more words) of
>     'compressor-decompressor' or, more accurately, 'coder-decoder'."
> 
>   It's a piece of software (or hardware, if we are technical).

Mmm, interesting...

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   It's a piece of software (or hardware, if we are technical).
> 

And when it's a piece of hardware, it most probably is a piece on
software on that hardware ;-).

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> And when it's a piece of hardware, it most probably is a piece on
> software on that hardware ;-).

  With simpler codecs it could be hardwired, so no software.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
>> And when it's a piece of hardware, it most probably is a piece on
>> software on that hardware ;-).
> 
>   With simpler codecs it could be hardwired, so no software.
> 

Well yes, it's possible - that's why "probably".

-Aero

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Invisible wrote:
>  From what I've seen, the W3C standards are _mostly_ reasonable, 

It would be mostly reasonable if W3C was actually implementing those things 
in their browser. A "mostly reasonable" standard can come out of a throughly 
broken standards process, and vice versa.

> the ad-hoc made-up stuff that browser implementors come up with is a 
> nightmare.

In part because W3C has a broken standards process that fails to account for 
how the world actually works.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> I think Darren is forgetting the insane mess

Not at all. I'm pointing out that the W3C has a broken standards process, 
not that what they come up with is bad, but that it isn't *standard*.

> that IE 
> created "before" MS decided that actually following universal standards 
> was a good idea, 

But they're not universal standards. For example, IE will only store 20 
cookies per site.  That's because that was the Mozilla standard. When W3C 
comes along and says "store more", and major business' web sites don't work 
with those "standard" browsers because W3C changed the universal standard to 
something "better" and then brow-beat all the others into following those 
standards, people blame IE for not getting with the program.

You can't constantly change standards that you expect a whole raft of people 
to implement and expect good results, no matter the quality of those standards.

 > standards that are, to the best ability of the other
> browser makers, ***not*** based on their own loose and random standards, 
> but one W3C standards.

Bzzzt.

> The *real* problem isn't that they make up odd standards, its that they 
> provide a few limited test pages to attempt to render, to match 
> compliance with "some" features, but they have no actual system to show 
> "how" the features are supposed to really interact to *get* that result. 

But that's exactly the problem with "making up standards". The broken 
standards process *is* the *cause* of what you describe.

If you said "nothing becomes an official web standard until three browsers 
implement it identically", you by definition wouldn't have this problem.

When's the last time you said "My ftp server won't talk to your FTP client"? 
Why? Because there were several interoperative implementations *before* it 
was a standard.  Sure, sometimes you get a mess like email address parsing, 
but that's the price you pay for interoperability.

The web really isn't mature enough to depend on all the cutting-edge 
pixel-perfect features that people want to use effortlessly. If it was, you 
wouldn't have a bunch of competing browsers constantly in the news, as they 
would all be commodities.

> In that respect, I agree there is a nasty mess.

It's no worse a mess than lots of other things. It's just that IETF has been 
doing it much longer and figured out the right way to make it work.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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