[FFmpeg-devel] The New Flash Video

[Måns Rullgård]

Guillaume Poirier <gpoirier at mplayerhq.hu> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Mike Melanson wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Big news: The most frequently asked question for FFmpeg usage is about
>> to go from:
>> 
>> "How do I encode FLV files with Sorenson H.263 video and MP3 audio?"
>> 
>> to:
>> 
>> "How to I encode MP4 files with H.264 video and AAC audio?"
>> 
>> More:
>> 
>> http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html
>> 
>
> Some people find this piece of news very disappointing:
> http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis/2007-August/026930.html

What a load of bollocks, and he seems to actually believe it to boot.

A few points where this chap is obviously mistaken:

- H.264 and AAC are not proprietary.  Quite to the contrary, they are
  open ISO/ITU standards.  The H.264 specification is available free
  of charge.  Although there is a charge for the AAC spec, this does
  not make it proprietary.

- The Xiph codecs are hardly patent-free.  On2 has granted a
  royalty-free license for the patents they hold covering Theora/VP3.
  The patent situation for Vorbis is at best unknown.  With the
  proliferation of patents, it is highly unlikely that none touches on
  algorithms used in Vorbis.

- The advantages of H.264 over Theora are quite clear: higher visual
  quality at lower bitrates.  Is that not enough?

I wish the Xiph folks would stop pretending they've got something they
do not.  Somehow I fear this will remain a wish.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mans at mansr.com