[FFmpeg-devel] The New Flash Video

[ods15 at ods15.dyndns.org]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 11:23:03AM -0700, Mike Melanson wrote:
> ods15 at ods15.dyndns.org wrote:
> > 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 :(
> 
> I don't see how that would be an issue-- you don't have ALSA on your
> Linux box anyway. :) Flash for Linux needs that for audio.

PulseAudio rocks :)
And the patch I use for Flash I think makes it use libao, so it can use 
practically anything... (not at all sure at what I just wrote)

BTW, before anyone points this out, yeah, if I can't play a flash video it 
will probably be because of the H.264, not because of the AAC. But I can 
actually see the incentive behind using H.264. I am not aware of any 
advantages of AAC over Vorbis though (better multi-channel?)

- ods15