Allow native video playing for OGG Theora

I am also wondering if you will ever implement server side transcoding of files to OGG Theora as well as flash. The reason why is, when you do drop the cortado player and allow native browser playing of Theora videos, there are several Theora container files that are not supported by the browsers.

Firefox for example can support playback of Theora videos, but only in the .ogg container and not in other commonly used containers such as .ogv , .ogm and .mkv and from what Theora videos are on Blip.tv, there are several that are in these unsupported containers.

If you were to take every file submitted and transcode on your sever so it is on the correct .ogg container then we would not have this problem and you would allow visitors to fully enjoy the benefits of the HTML 5 features.

ogg theora is an obscure format that apparently has less than stellar picture quality... what we really need is native h.264 uploading capability without re-encoding, similar to how vp6 currently works.

firefox has less than 25% of the web browser market, which makes it rather obscure in and of itself... if you care about making your web video easily playable for the most people, you'll go with established standards like i.e., h.264, and vp6, just like youtube has done.

giving people the option of uploading obscure and inferior web video formats increases the overhead for the currently unprofitable blip.tv operation... and is ogg theora compatible with whatever streaming host solutions that blip is using?

dailymotion was found guilty of copyright infringement, they shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as blip... also, "A flaw in the version of FFmpeg used in the test initially led to incorrect reports of Theora PSNR surpassing that of H.264", don't fall for the hype.

A your outlook is narrow minded my friend. I do doubt many of these statistics your are quoting. I am not interested in hype or allegations. I am interested in open and free exchange of information which H.264, VP6 etc do not promise and are in no way a 'standard'. If you still believe Theora is such an inferior video format then you obviously have not looked at the links I gave you.

Blip.tv may not be profitable yet but that is commons for many startups and SME's. It took Amazon far longer to become profitable. Many people like myself will choose Blip.tv over other providers because of it's open platform and support for open standards.

If you want you videos to be patent encumbered and you want to force this on your viewers, then that is your choice, you clearly do not believe in free and open exchange of information.

The point is choice, Blip.tv supports the playback of both H.264 and Theora. They do believe in the ideals of free and open information exchange, see their blog post on their introduction of Theora here. This argument over codecs will go on for years as it has in the past, but we must focus on freedom, for if our information is not free why produce it in the first place.

A your outlook is narrow minded my friend. I do doubt many of these statistics your are quoting. I am not interested in hype or allegations. I am interested in open and free exchange of information which H.264, VP6 etc do not promise and are in no way a 'standard'. If you still believe Theora is such an inferior video format then you obviously have not looked at the links I gave you.

Blip.tv may not be profitable yet but that is commons for many startups and SME's. It took Amazon far longer to become profitable. Many people like myself will choose Blip.tv over other providers because of it's open platform and support for open standards.

If you want you videos to be patent encumbered and you want to force this on your viewers, then that is your choice, you clearly do not believe in free and open exchange of information.

The point is choice, Blip.tv supports the playback of both H.264 and Theora. They do believe in the ideals of free and open information exchange, see their blog post on their introduction of Theora here. This argument over codecs will go on for years as it has in the past, but we must focus on freedom, for if our information is not free why produce it in the first place.

stephen, idealism is admirable for somebody in, say, high school or college, but it doesn't work in the real world, where the venture capitalists that are funding blip are looking for a return on their monetary investment... ogg theora is counter-productive, because it wastes engineering resources for zero fiscal gain; do you really think that blip is getting paid to set internet standards?

h.264, by comparison, will benefit blip, because it is a superior codec over the vp6 that they are currently using, which can save them bandwidth costs, and it is compatible with youtube, which egg theora is not... the big unknown with h.264 right now is what the licensing costs will be.

the firefox browser stats are well documented, 23% market share here:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/brows...

i.e. does not support the html 5 video tag, much less ogg theora, and neither apple or google have agreed to make the theora the default codec for html 5; in fact, the opposite happened, theora was removed as the default codec in the latest html 5 video spec... it's going backwards, not forward, which is entirely appropriate, given it's total obscurity, and the patent questions surrounding it.

It seems you yourself are a bit sucked into hype about H.264 and I am not here to debate that. I did not start this topic with a desire to debate the values of one codec over another, or market shares etc. Please do not make assumptions about my background. I am neither a High School or College student and I don't hide behind a username.

If you took the time to read what I had said you will see that I am only interested in free and open access to information. I think I made that point clear several times. I will let Blip.tv worry about their investors. I am not seeking to waste engineering time and I do not believe I have done so. Blip.tv committed to supporting Theora well before I started this topic and if you read their blog post you will see they were happy to do so. In fact by asking Blip.tv to drop the Cortado player in favour of native browser support I am asking them to so something that is easier to do than what they had already achieved with their implementation of the Cortado player. Dropping the player and allowing for native browser support only requires them to add the <video> tags and some CSS to allow the files to play nicely on their site. This is no more than what they have already done.

Server side encoding should also be an relatively simple task to implement with their existing encoding infrastructure using ffmpeg2theora.

No I do not believe that Blip.tv is be paid to set internet standards, but it is forward thinking companies and organisation like Mozilla, Xiph, Blip.tv and those of the Open Video Alliance that help to push the advancement and adoption of free and open information standards and in turn create true educational and creative values on the Internet and in society.

You may see me as an idealist, which I have no problem with, because without idealists we would just allow corporate interests to dictate art, culture and education. And for this reason I am proud to be one. When I am making CD's of the Wikipedia with open video content in Theora to be sent to areas around the world without interenet access, I am able to do so because of open content and open standards.

We can balance each other out I suspect. I have said all that I need to say, and if staff from Blip.tv read this they will decide what is important to their company, but I will not apologise for asking them to push forward with innovation.</video>