Tag Archives: audio

OggCast is on its way…

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Posted by skullbochs on 18 June 2009 – 5:35 pm
Filed under skullbochs radio
Tagged as , , , , ,

I promised a while back to do a podcast in Ogg Vorbis. I’m stilling going to do it, I’ve just been busy and haven’t had much time to do it. I already have the first episode drafted, and I’ll try to get around to it either tonight or tomorrow. I’m probably going to be using the Internet Archive for file hosting, and I think it takes a while for uploads to be approved, so expect the first episode by Saturday.

Update: I can’t find my draft for the first episode. I’m postponing the show until next week. Sorry.

2nd Update: I’m just going to postpone the show until Firefox 3.5 officially launches and I can be sure everyone has a chance to listen to it.

Firefox 3.5 supports <audio> and <video>!!!

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Posted by skullbochs on 12 June 2009 – 12:23 am
Filed under squee!!!
Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft, recorded by Cameron Halket for Librivox:

The above audio file is encoded in Ogg Vorbis, a patent-free, royalty-free format. Mozilla Firefox 3.5 supports the HTML 5 <audio> and <video> tags that facilitate browser-native handling of audio and video playback. Vorbis, like other Ogg formats (Speex, CELT, FLAC, Theora), is a free multimedia codec. There are no royalties, and the source code for the codec is available for no charge under a free software license.

It will also work in Safari 4 if you have the XiphQT plugin installed.

Play Ogg

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Posted by skullbochs on 7 June 2009 – 11:15 am
Filed under proprietary perils
Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Mp3) audio has not yet been succeeded. Both Apple and Microsoft have been pushing their own newfangled proprietary codecs, but they’re just not sufficiently better for most people to care. Increasing storage and bandwidth have lessened the need for better lossy compression, while lack of widespread compatibility for any of the alternatives forces people to use Mp3 to ensure compatibility. Xiph’s Ogg Vorbis is in fourth-place, but has carved out a respectable niche for itself among GNU/Linux enthusiasts and video game developers.

What wrong with this picture is that, among the four codecs listed, Vorbis is the only one you don’t have to pay to use. The Mp3 format is restricted by a variety of software patents that won’t expire for several years yet. The early years of Mp3 were marred by controversy when many people who wrote implementations of the Mp3 format under the impression that it was royalty-free found themselves facing royalties. Because of this, many GNU/Linux distributions will not play Mp3 files out of the box. Users have to download additional software (usually illegally) to play the same files that will play on the cheap Mp3 player they got for Christmas.

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