[FM Discuss] Fwd: [Consortium] Outrageous disaster: Ogg/Vorbis spec taken out of HTML-5

[Mick Fuzz]

> >
> > yep i agree. the more people using it the greater
> its cultural and
> > practical importance. manuals can only help here..
> >
> 

Ok, well here's a basic manual put together from
exising resources. I hope it's helpful. Feels better
than getting angry about the situation. 

http://en.flossmanuals.net/FFmpeg2Theora/Introduction

- here's the intro - 

 ffmpeg2theora is a very useful application that
enables you to manipulate all kinds of video with the
Ogg Theora video file format ('codec').

Its pretty impossible to give a quick summary of what
ffmpeg2theora can do as it is a very powerful
application. You can send live video from a video
camera across the internet, capture video from a DV
camera, convert other formats to Ogg Theora, change
the size of video files, add extra audio tracks etc
etc etc

It is a command line application, this means there is
no graphic user interface ('GUI'), and you have tell
ffmpeg2theora what to do through the use of commands. 

Running an application like this on the command line
gets some getting used to, but in the long run, if you
persevere, it becomes easier to do and quicker. You
can also quickly cut and paste commands to do very
powerful things without the need to endlessly figure
out where the settings are kept in graphical
interfaces.

You may ask why it's relevant to encode media to Ogg
Theora rather than more common video file formats like
MP4. You might not have known but the format of video
files is often owned by companies - this can sometimes
lead to problems. If, for example,  users only use
proprietary video file formats like MP4 then the
future for video applications is quite dark. While end
users don't have to pay to use MP4 technology, the
software creators do. This means that by only encoding
to commercial, closed formats you are limiting the
possibilities of using free, accessible tools in the
future.
Currently it's common to encode to the flv (flash)
file format to embed video in webpages. Flash is owned
by Adobe. However it is possible to embed Ogg files in
internet pages just as easily. To give Web developers
the encouragement to do this we should make our video
content available in the Ogg Theora format.

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