[FFmpeg-devel] The New Flash Video

[ods15 at ods15.dyndns.org]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 07:01:29PM +0100, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> 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.

Not going to join this discussion further than this mail, just wanted to 
say, I agree with everything you said - my only gripe is with choosing AAC 
over Vorbis, and only for CPU reasons... I'm dreading the day I'll see 
some youtube video I can't watch because my 1.8GHz won't be able to handle 
it :(

- ods15