Talk:Ogg: Difference between revisions

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Tutorial: How to play and/or use Ogg Vorbis files

Please check Help with Ogg Vorbis for advice on playing sound files on Wikipedia and other places.

If you would like to see a list of all Ogg Vorbis files available at Wikipedia (most of them under the public domain), go to Wikipedia:Sound/list.

--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (I don't like Wikipedophiles) 14:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lossy and lossless codecs

Should it be pointed out for each codec whether it is lossy or lossless? Someone just changed FLAC's opening text, "an audio codec", to "a lossless audio codec". This is fine, I suppose, even if it's redundant as FLAC's description text goes on to explain its lossless nature.

So, should it be explicitly pointed out for each codec whether it is lossy or lossless? And how should this be achieved in a consistent manner?

I already did some work on the organization of the codecs list, hopefully making it more immediately understandable and readable. Maybe, just as I broke down the codecs to "audio" and "video", they should also be broken into levels of "lossy" and "lossless". I'll go ahead and do this, as I'm really the only person that consistently edits these pages, but if someone has a better idea: feel free to edit, of course. --Jizzbug

The list in the Ogg codecs section should be presented as a table.--Michael Ray

Missing focus

This page has good links to the codecs frequently embedded in Ogg containers but says essentially nothing about the bitstream format itself, its uses, or implications. I'm going to make a major rewrite of this in the next day or so. --Heywood

Ogg Squish :: I removed Ogg Squish from the list because it was never an Ogg codec. It was a project by the same author as Ogg Vorbis, but it was never in an Ogg encapsulation. However, now that I have tracked down the source, I'll be bringing it up to date so we can add it back in.. probobally 6-8 months. Not a top priority for me. Source code can be found at: http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/mwhitson/Project/Ogg/ogg9-partial.tgz 207.127.233.34 12:33, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link to matroska? --Repabil

User help

Hello Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason,

I restored the link to user help. Here is the rationale:

Many Wikipedia articles contain sound files. They are labeled with a link to Ogg.
The Ogg Vorbis format continues to be obscure, and most people's computers are not set up to play these files.
Computer-savvy people will immediately know what to do; they will find and download a player that can handle Ogg files.
However, many Wikipedia readers are not computer-savvy. They deserve to be given help, immediately and clearly. Otherwise they will simply give up.
This is why the Ogg article needs a link, prominently located, to the help file.

Thank you for your understanding. Opus33 17:04, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The need for a help page is inevitable, but the need for it to be linked via this page is not. There is thus a very simple way around this issue, which I seem to remember pointing out before: fix the links to point directly to the help page. A link to a Wikipedia: or Help: page next to each sound would actually be more helpful, in that it would be more direct; and if the link was added using a template, it would be a lesser breach of the avoid self-references policy.

Meanwhile, I still think Wikipedia:How to play Ogg files needs serious work, and in particular a more appropriate list of software than that provided by Vorbis.com. That's a larger issue, but again, if all the references were in one template, we could choose between the various help pages (yours, current, mine, or most likely some combination thereof) just by changing the template, and even decide at some point in the future to use something like meta:Template:Sound if it seemed desirable.

So, the point is, rather than retaining the self-reference - against general policy - we should be tracking down the references to this page and replacing them with something more appropriate. - IMSoP 19:49, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello IMSoP,

Since we last discussed, some other editors evidently have taken up the Ogg help problem, and there now seems to be an "official" solution, with a help file posted at Wikipedia:Audio_help. I've relinked this page to that one, and when I have the time, I will remove all links to my old help file.

The people involved have also devised a template to put next to sound files, which you can see at (for example) Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven).

There are still a lot of sound files whose only "how to" link is to this page, so until they all get fixed to point to Wikipedia:Audio_help instead, I'd like to leave this link in place. Also, it will be important to periodically check that any new links to Ogg that should be linking to Wikipedia:Audio_help get corrected.

I hope this strikes you as helpful, or at least well-intentioned. Yours truly, Opus33 23:10, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Opus33, the reason I removed the link was to generally avoid self-references in the article, see Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, I say generally because that's not the only thing i changed, see the diff, I also removed the "List of .ogg files on Wikipedia" link which was completely inappropriate.

Regardless, I think the problem could be resolved of course by fixing the links you mentioned and by just adding a disambiguation notice at the top: This article is about the Ogg container format, for the audio format see Vorbis., this would immitiately direct anyone wanting to play Vorbis files to that article (which contains the help link you mentioned). —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:18, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

more info

this needs more info about the concept of a "wrapper". how is the vorbis or theora or flac file contained within the ogg file? why would anyone do this in the first place? can all of these "codecs" exist outside of ogg files, like .flac files can? (i didn't know you could put flac files inside oggs until just now. you can, right? everything in the codecs section can be put inside one?) etc. - Omegatron 18:27, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

"The segments provide a way to group segments into packets", this appears to be recursive definition to me... does the second segment just mean a chunk of data ?

Has there been an Ogg Project?

This article and Theora and Xiph.Org Foundation make it sound as if the technologies where developed as the Ogg Project. Is that true? --Hhielscher 01:34, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What is a codecs?

Yes I followed the link and I'm not much wiser. What is needed is an eplanation as to what ogg codecs actually do and why you might need one. Is a codecs what you need if you want to transfer the tracks from your CDs to ogg format? Is kaudiocreator a front end for an ogg codecs? It seems to me that if you know enougth about ogg to understand this article you don't need to read it.Dejvid 15:46, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ogg is only a container format. Music is stored as Vorbis inside an Ogg container. Please tell us at Talk:Container format how we could improve that page.--Hhielscher 16:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If a concept is new then it is much easier to understand in a specific context. What I was trying to say is that what is needed is an explanation of what a codecs is in relation to ogg files. I'm begining to grasp that what I really need to understand is vorbis. Vorbis is mentioned on the page but only as a codecs and of course at the top to say that some people wrongly call vorbis ogg, ( but nothing to help the reader to realize should they have been under that misconception). What I have on my hard disk is files with .ogg at the end and these are the things that produce music when I play them. Those are the things that are real to me. What is needed is something like, on this page, "The audio files with a .ogg extention on your disk are codecs like vorbis contained in a ogg container format". I say "like" because that is just my guess as to what they are and is no doubt incorrect. (Thank you for replying)Dejvid 18:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the idea of container formats is not that new. If you have a ogg file that contains audio than it may contain Speex, Vorbis or FLAC (as listed in Ogg#Ogg_codecs). Athough Vorbis may be included in other containers as well, see Comparison_of_container_formats.--Hhielscher 19:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Container formats may well not be new but they will be new to most people coming to this page.Dejvid 17:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ogg compatible hardware players

This list doesn't belong in the article. It should be merged with hardware list at Vorbis, or the one at the Xiph wiki.

Cowon iAudio M3 - 20gb to 40gb harddrive
Cowon iAudio U2 - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Cowon iAudio G3 - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Cowon iAudio 5 - 256mb to 2gb flashdrive
Cowon iAudio X5 - 20gb to 60gb harddrive
Cowon iAudio M5 - 20gb harddrive
Cowon iAudio F1 - 512mb to 2gb flashdrive
Cowon iAudio U3 - 512mb to 2gb flashdrive
Cowon iAudio 6 - 4gb harddrive
iriver H100 series - 20gb to 40gb harddrive
iriver H300 series - 20gb to 40gb harddrive
iriver iFP-700 Series - 128mb to 1gb flashdrive
iriver iFP-800 Series - 128mb to 1gb flashdrive
iriver iFP-900 Series - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
IOPS Z5 - 512mb to 1gb flashdrive
Mpio ONE - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Mpio hd 200 - 5gb harddrive
Mpio hd 300 - 20gb to 40gb harddrive
Neuros jukebox - 256mb to 20gb flashdrive/harddrive
Neuros II - 256mb to 60gb flashdrive/harddrive
RioVolt SP250 (but you'll need to install the iriver firmware) - CD
Rio Karma - 20gb harddrive
Samsung YP-C1 - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Samsung YP-MT6 - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Samsung YP-T6 - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Samsung YP-T7 - 256mb to 1gb flashdrive
Samsung YH-J70 - 20gb to 30gb harddrive

MIME type

Does someone know what the rationale is for having a single MIME type for all OGG files? Isn't the purpose of MIME types to convey as much information about the type of file as possible? With Ogg being a container format, the fact that something is "application/ogg" doesn't say much. We now have Theora videos on Commons, all of which have the same MIME type as the Vorbis sound files. How am I meant to tell Firefox to use mplayer for the Theora videos, and XMMS for the sounds, especially as all have the same extension as well?--Eloquence * 03:24, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When did it start?

The article says, "At its inception, the Ogg project was thought to be somewhat ambitious given the power of the PC hardware of the time" without actually saying when the project began, making the statement highly ambiguous. Theshibboleth 11:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone please add more to History of Ogg?

I reckon it lacks many things, like when did development start, among others. If there's an editor with good knowledge on this issue, please improve that section. --Saoshyant 15:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't work

On Wikipedia, this stupid file is everywhere. If I want to play a sound, its in .ogg! Try a more conventional file, ok? Like .avi .mid or anything normal. My computer doesn't read this file. -71.224.24.99 19:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the Media help (Ogg) article that's suggested at the top of this page? The page explains how to play Ogg Vorbis files. Did you actually read the article to understand why Wikipedia uses this format? I suggest you actually read the articles you're replying to before you make such ignorant comments. And BTW, the sentence "my computer doesn't read this file" is total nonsense. Your computer has nothing to do with it. — J. M. 22:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although his or her comments might sound ignorant to you, he raises a good point that you should not so easily dismiss: .ogg is not a format that is normally familiar to the basic computer user. Perhaps this should be considered a hurdle that wikipedia should try its best to overcome--especially if users are prone to getting frustrated with it and don't know how to seek out the information on how to use the files. 100DashSix 02:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's why there is the help page that explains how to play the files (what more could you ask for?), and that's why there is the explanation at the top of this page. I consider it rude when someone posts a complaint "I don't know what to do with XY!" directly to a page that explains what to do with XY. They didn't even bother to read the page they're replying to. Also, Wikipedia uses the format for good reasons (almost everything else in the multimedia field is patented, proprietary and not accessible to everyone on any platform). And it is explained in the articles, too. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and its contents are freely available to anyone. Wikipedia uses open formats. It cannot use closed, proprietary, patented formats. And anyone can play Ogg Vorbis files — even if it doesn't work "out of the box" on their operating systems, they can easily install software that can handle the format. The software is freely available to anyone and installation instructions are available in the Wikipedia pages, too. So all you have to do is understand it and accept it. Or, if you understand it but still don't like it, there are closed, proprietary encyclopedias for people who prefer proprietary closed solutions. —J. M. 04:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

".ogg is not a format that is normally familiar to the basic computer user. Perhaps this should be considered a hurdle that wikipedia should try its best to overcome". Perhaps this is a hurdle that Wikipedia users should try their best to overcome? After all, ignorance should be fought, not promoted. I'm sick and tired of having to "defend" free software/open formats/free standards from the despise of ignorant slaves of proprietary formats. If you can not play Ogg Vorbis files it is your friggin' problem, not Wikipedia's. Vorbis is free, and anyone can get a player (for free, if they so will), unlike proprietary formats like MP3. — isilanes (talk|contribs) 17:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, instructions how to play Ogg Vorbis files are included in the Wikipedia articles. So if the users ignore them and complain that they can't play the files without even reading the instructions that are written there, that's inexcusable behaviour and they have no right to complain. —J. M. 17:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Perhaps this is a hurdle that Wikipedia users should try their best to overcome?...If you can not play Ogg Vorbis files it is your friggin' problem." In other words, you're saying that Wikipedia should do nothing to predict who its audience might be, and has no responsibility to make it as easy as possible for its audience to access its media? I see no reason why both users and Wikipedia should not try their hardest to overcome the problem. Anyway, I do know the information exists on how to play these files, but not everyone knows how to get it, as shown by the original poster. I was just asking if there is a better way that things can be done, either in terms of audio format or in the way that the information is presented. Sorry, I didn't know that asking these sorts of questions means that I am an "ignorant slave of proprietary formats." Oh, and MP3 players are not only free, but the most popular operating systems can handle them out of the box. 100DashSix 01:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MP3 players are free, but the most popular operating systems they run on are not. They can handle MP3 out of the box because their users paid for them, which in turn enables the operating system makers to pay MP3 licensing fees and therefore include out-of-the-box MP3 playback in their products. There are free operating systems (such as various Linux distributions) that cannot offer MP3 playback out of the box because MP3 is a non-free, patented format. This is why Wikipedia uses free formats, which are freely accessible to anyone (assuming they have a computer). Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. If it used closed, patented formats, that that would deny its essence, everything Wikipedia is based on. So if you don't like Vorbis audio in Wikipedia, you are free to use some other, closed encyclopedia that uses closed formats. And since Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia, it means its contents are created by anyone who is interested in contributing. So if you feel some information (such as Ogg Vorbis playback instructions) is missing or not sufficient, go ahead and add it. That's the way Wikipedia works. So just take it or leave it. —J. M. 03:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pronounciation

I thought I saw a pronounciation of "Ogg" on this article before. It should be included again if it was removed or added if it was never there. --70.111.218.254 14:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Plugins?

http://records.tastytronic.net/ogg.html

Patents in OGG?

Hi. According to a WIRED article, many companies do not use OGG because of the possibility of parts of it being covered by other patents. Any info's on that? --Chris 73 | Talk 11:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You read the wired article too? - I went here to investigate. I'll make a small addendum about this. Bfg 10:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the section properly belongs to the Vorbis article, as Ogg is just the container, not the audio codec. —J. M. 16:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and disagree, the claims are directed against Vorbis, although the consequences are suffered by the entire project. Bfg 12:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

is "patent-free" appropriate language

Identification of data formats

A crucial piece of information omitted from this article is where the information about the individual data streams is stored. How does a program reading an OGG file know that, e.g., it contains a single channel of linear PCM audio data or two channels of Ogg Vorbis compressed audio data, or whatever? Bill 20:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

File Extension

Could someone write a sentence or two on Xiphs harebrained decision to have one common file extension for all possible contents of Oggs (unlike e.g. m4a, mp4, m4v etc.) I can't write it myself, because, well, it probably wouldn't quite meet Wikipedia NPOV standards:

I don't want to open movies in winamp. I just d/led a video clip from another wikipedia entry and had to rename it (to ogm; they may not strictly be the same but close enough, and Tobias Whatshisname at least doesn't hate his users, unlike Xiph and Wikimedia), a completely unnecessary step and sure to confuse average users who have no fucking clue what a container format is, nor an interest in finding out (and rightfully so).

I really don't see why you should need hacks/helper applications or other overengineered ways to distinguish audio from video files when Windows provides a perfectly fine way of doing so, just because some idiots look at the code ("it's the same kind of file *whinewhine*") instead of the function ("no it isn't fucktards, the one is an audio file, the other a video file"). Thx 82.135.85.226 19:53, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably cheaper for you to get a Wikipedia user name than it is for you to buy a real OS, but I'd recommend both. Chris Cunningham 19:59, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please be so kind to explain in plain English what you desire. You're right about one thing, you are not NPOV, nevertheless adjectives like "fucking" and "harebrained" don't make me or anybody for that matter especially inclined to meet your request. BTW, the word "fucktards" is new to me, I get it's a negative one, but I honestly don't understand it. Please make a request in a civil manner and I promise you I'll consider it. Bfg 15:25, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While the original poster of this section was rather rude and agressive (btw fucktards can be taken to be roughly synonomous to retards but with the more agressive tone that swearing adds) he is indeed bringing up one of the most common criticisms of ogg that i see which is that basing the file extention on the container format is a bad idea. File extentions while imperfect (the biggest issue is that they are generally very short due to a convention that dates back to the 8.3 days meaning that conflicts are very common) are the closest thing most systems have to filetype metadata and from the users perspective an audio file and a video file are very different things. Yes its possible to grab filetype info from the file itself but the dominant OS has little if any support for doing so (you'd probablly need a custom shell extention) and it is comparatively slow to read every file. As for wikimedia they are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. If they use the ogg extention they will make life difficult for those who want audio and video treated differently. If they use ogm then they won't play on systems that don't support tobais's nonstandard extentions. ~~130.88.116.93 13:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)~~ Plugwash 13:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, this thing just really gets me going, and I think rightfully so. If you're on a system that identifies files by magic numbers or something then why use an extension at all?

If on the other hand you don't want to leave 90% of your audience out in the rain and use an extension anyway, you could show poor Windows users some love.

The current Xiph system of calling everything .ogg, does

(a) take the de facto standard and subtly subvert it to make it incompatible with the predominant implementation. Microsoft does stuff like this, too; but they do it to crush the competition and to herald the reign of Satan, while I'm not quite sure what Xiph intends to achieve.

(b) make it harder for the user, not just on Windows. It makes it difficult to sort and move large numbers of files in a unix shell, because you effectively have to decide for each file by hand what's in it (even if they use the .theora.ogg etc versions below, you'd have to write a script that differentiates all possible combinations of theora, vorbis and ogg, and that's in the best case scenario that everyone actually uses these extensions)

(c) offer absolutely no advantage at all AFAIK.

On the ogm problem: They wouldn't have to actually use Tobias' implementation. The important thing is that .ogm would be associated with a video player and therefore play the ogg correctly (as neither dshow nor vlc or mplayer/xine etc. look at the extension when creating the filter-chain but parse the file itself) if the user has the necessary filter. How about .ogv? Is that used by something important? Or .oggvideo, iirc Windows supports more than 3 letters since 95/NT.

(argh, they're not the only ones who were late. Had I read the draft before writing this, it would have become a lot shorter. Apparently .ogv is the future. It's imho 5 years overdue but I know that it's sometimes hard to overturn old decisions and I congratulate them on biting the bullet. I hope it becomes official soon :)

And last but not least: I still think the decision was harebrained, the fucking wasn't part of any insult and didn't even the courts acknowledge some time ago that "fuck" lost a lot of its bite? :) I *did* call them idiots which was not nice, but posts like this one are imho borderline whining (not that my original post wouldn't qualify, too :P) and idiotic. But I'd like to take back the fucktard. 82.135.1.13 21:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a draft of a Xiph recommendation to make more extensions (all but FLAC are 3-letter…). I myself am using extensions like “.theora.ogg“, “.theora+vorbis.ogg”, etc. for now. If this requires an article, there was one somewhere (don't remember - probably Slashdot or linux.org.ru). - AVRS 16:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, looks like it was at http://vorbis.org.ru/ (in Russian), but the site doesn't load right now - AVRS 16:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some software such as Handbrake are already utelizing .ogm for video.

Metadata

Can someone please clean up my new metadata section?

@@ Line 190: / Line 190: @@
 There is [http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/MIME_Types_and_File_Extensions a draft] of a Xiph recommendation to make more extensions (all but FLAC are 3-letter…). I myself am using extensions like “.theora.ogg“, “.theora+vorbis.ogg”, etc. for now. If this requires an article, there was one somewhere (don't remember - probably [http://slashdot.org/ Slashdot] or [http://linux.org.ru/ linux.org.ru]). - [[User:AVRS|AVRS]] 16:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
 ::Ah, looks like it was at http://vorbis.org.ru/ (in Russian), but the site doesn't load right now - [[User:AVRS|AVRS]] 16:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
+Some software such as [http://handbrake.m0k.org/ Handbrake] are already utelizing .ogm for video.
+==Metadata==
+Can someone please clean up my new metadata section?