MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain 331
nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."
The title of the post makes no sense whatsoever... (Score:5, Informative)
Yet the title of the article says it's "Open Source's Gain"?
Re:The title of the post makes no sense whatsoever (Score:1, Informative)
Re:the problem with format patents (Score:3, Informative)
You mean patents like these [mp3licensing.com]..? :(
Re:the problem with format patents (Score:5, Informative)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:3, Informative)
CD players would all have to become DVD players to make up for the difference.
Hard drive space may be cheap, but recordable media hasn't grown in size (well, there is Blu-Ray but the cost is prohibitive to the point of not being worth discussing). So yes, file size is still a big deal unless you don't listen to music on recorded CDs (for instance, mp3 CD in the car).
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:3, Informative)
I have a friend who can see the difference between 60fps and 72fps in online games and 60fps bugs the crap out of him.
I can hear the difference if i put on a CD and listen to it side by side- but not otherwise. MP3's - regardless of how good sound a little "muddy" compared to a CD.
However you are probably right that 256kbps vs 512kbps are basically the same (both will have some muddiness compared to a pure cd but be similar to each other).
Created Issue (Score:4, Informative)
M$ forbade ogg to users of their "plays for sure" DRM. This blatantly anti-competitive action was slapped down in the EU [theregister.co.uk], and lamely explained as a "mistake", but is a reason every cheap "mp3 player" does not also play ogg vorbis like my Trekstore or my Zaurus does. The hardware issue is spurious and there are low resource vorbis codecs.
Software patents suck and I'm happy I have mostly avoided mp3. It was a pain to get in the first place and it's still a pain. Too lame will give you "mp3" for your cheap player without patent problems, but vorbis is technically superior. Most of my music is ogg and I don't have any real problems enjoying it.
Re:How to play Vorbis on an Ipod? (Score:2, Informative)
Howtos are on the site.
You flash the bootloader (using a tool they provide), then extract the daily-built rar file to your iPod (which you have to have formatted and enabled for Windows USB Mass-Storage compatibility).
Then, just start copying your music to your iPod/harddrive in whatever format/directory structure you want.
AAC, MP3, FLAC, OGG, etc, all supported
Re:Everyone's thinking this ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
All the double-blind tests by audiophiles at Hydrogenaudio and other sites that due true ABX testing disagree with you. For most people, most of the time, with most types of music, pretty much every modern codec is transparent well below 256kbps.
Yes, people can train themselves to listen for the specific artifacts of different codecs, but if you're not an audio engineer, why would you want to?
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:2, Informative)
It's already been established you meant kbps.
But, yes, you can. Instead of your iPod headphones or car stereo, listen to the difference in an actual studio or club with a properly tuned sound system. And I don't mean self-powered Mackies or Yorkvilles running off of a Pioneer 600. Try something with a Rane or Allen & Heath with Turbo Sound, then we'll talk!
The difference between 256 and 320 and WAV is noticeable in both the crispness of high-hats and the warm of the mids / synths of a track. Under 320 it almost seems logarithmic how quickly the sound deteriorates.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Informative)
I admire the Ogg Vorbis project for creating a free codec that may not be patent-encumbered, but my cars and my iPod don't play ogg files. Considering that I think of my cars as my personal listening studio, well, they're first on the importance list when it comes to compatibility. MP3 for me, and it will be for the foreseeable future.
Re:Why sue Microsoft? (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
All formats may be in danger (Score:3, Informative)
http://crunchgear.com/2007/02/24/patent-monkey-de
Ya, it is (Score:5, Informative)
So the music is 44.1khz, 16-bit, 2-tracks, the voice you cut down a bit and do 22khz, 16-bit 1 track. That's about 2.6GB uncompressed. FLAC tends to get around 50% compression, so 1.3GB or so. Ouch. That requires over 2 CDs to do. If I'm on a DVD it's still a good amount of space. If we want to stick to a SL DVD, that means only 3.4GB for all other assets.
Now what if we go OGG? Well for speech we can easily go 64k. We can probably even push it to less if we want but 64k should give great speech quality. For music we could go pretty low since it is in game (UT 2004 is only 96-128k) but heck, we'll be generous and say 256k which is "CD Quality" on everything but the very best gear. That totals about 500MB. Much better, under a single CD now and nearly a 3x savings over FLAC. We can easily halve that again by going 32k and 128k respectively and still probably sound great to the vast majority of users.
For a music collection, sure use FLAC. It's your drive, you determine how much space you want to buy. For games, however, you need to be economical about it. You don't want your assets taking up more space then they have to, that can artificially limit your market.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
Ogg is Xiph.org foundation's streaming container format. Vorbis is Xiph.org foundation's lossy audio codec. FLAC is Xiph.org foundation's lossless audio codec. Everyone's clear now
Most interesting tidbit from the article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:standard vs chaos (Score:2, Informative)
Re:if (!playsonipod){format.languishInTheMargins() (Score:3, Informative)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
http://rockbox.org
Can't be true (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure what you're saying is accurate.
Re:the problem with format patents (Score:4, Informative)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, MP3 is here to stay... (Score:2, Informative)
It is obvious that the core of the current dilemma with respect to the MP3 format revolves around patents, patents that are licensed across national borders no less (Fraunhofer IIS being the German research organization previously recognized as the sole patent holder for the technology involved in encoding and decoding MP3s). But within the framework of discussing a movement away from the MP3 format as a result of ambiguity on the legal weight behind Alcatel-Lucent's claims (which were obviously convincing enough to defeat Microsoft's well-funded lawyer teams in a United States federal court of law), we must examine the source of the format's omnipresence in the first place. Yes, $1.65 billion USD is nothing to sneeze at, and if Microsoft's appeal doesn't go through, there will very well be a motivation for other big players on the market to drop MP3 encoding support from their audio products (it remains to be seen if Alcatel-Lucent's patents also cover decoding).
But why is MP3 the de facto audio format in the market? The true reason has nothing to do with Fraunhofer, their patents, and especially not Alcatel-Lucent. It was merely the only viable format for copying and transferring audio files at the pivotal point in the evolution of the Internet when it become viable to do so. Nullsoft's Winamp provided out-of-the box support for MP3s in 1997, followed by the release of Napster in 1999 which kickstarted the real explosion of music trading, almost solely in MP3 format. The average person today who has a digital music collection has the majority of their files in the MP3 format. This lawsuit will not compel them to covert these files to Ogg Vorbis, especially if the much more tangible benefits of higher quality per filesize ratio has not already enticed them (not to mention the quality degradation of conversion from one lossy format to another).
So, Microsoft got nailed for including MP3 encoding support in Windows Media Player. But in all of this speculation about the industry migrating away from MP3 as a result of this lawsuit, did anyone stop to consider that MP3 is not even the default format that WMP encodes to? And sure, iTunes has support for encoding to MP3 as well, but is the default not to rip to MPEG-4 AAC from digital audio CDs? And even so, none of this changes the fact that MP3 is still the most commonly used file format for audio files on Bit Torrent, Usenet, IRC, etc. Most organized ripping groups use LAME anyway, so it's not as if they aren't already using software that infringes upon patents once compiled. No, it's quite obvious that patents have little to nothing to do with MP3's claim to fame as the most popular digital audio format, just as it should be readily apparent that dubious patent claims by Alcatel-Lucent will have nothing to do with any sort of mass migration away from the MP3 format in the next couple of years.
It's 2007. Any significant gains for the Free/Open Source community will come when the MP3 patent expires in 2010 and GNU/Linux distributions can include support for the format by default, sans royalties. It's naive to think that anything significant will happen with respect to some sort of organic migration away from one of the most classic examples of "format inertia" within the next three years, be it corporate-backed or not.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:3, Informative)
5.1 is nice - you would have to go with AC3 and DTS (preferrably full-bitrate DTS) to have a chance of any wide-spread interest but it is only nice if mixed by someone who knows what they are doing, otherwise it is just a gimmick.
Even more anal retentive (Score:5, Informative)
- Ogg is a container like Matroshka (MSK) or AVI (but better than that one. Almost anything is better than AVI)
- Vorbis is a sound codec, just like AAC.
FLAC is a format that considers both the compression codec AND the container (something like MPEG : you have both codecs, like MPEG-2 MPEG-4, MPEG Audio Layer III, and containers like MPEG Programm (MPG files)).
You can have a stand alone FLAC file (with one given container format) or by using another switch on the command line, you can have FLAC compressed audio inside an OGG container.
The first is called "Native FLAC", the second "Ogg FLAC". See here [sourceforge.net]
OGG is spreading. (Score:3, Informative)
Several older asian player, that were mostly pure software player, with a general purpose processor and decompression implemented as a interger/fixed-point software in the firmware, can be flashed to add support for additional formats (ie.: using official plugins from the constructor, no need to completly replace the firmware with RockBox).
Also, most PDA and SmartPhone (except the future locked-iPhone) can install software player that support playing OGGs from the flash media (or from the internal drive if you happen to have some model like the LifeDrive). TCPMP [corecodec.org] is such an example for Palm OS and Win CE.
Re:AAC is the most likely winner (Score:1, Informative)
It's certainly not patent free, but the licensing is simpler:
I *believe* that the big problem with MP3 is that it requires licensing fees to distribute/stream (percentage of revenue - http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/ [mp3licensing.com]), whereas AAC does not - you just pay for the license to use the encoder, with the encoder writers paying the fees for licensing to the holders (www.vialicensing.com [vialicensing.com]).
So, iTunes and Real which both use AAC under their encryption layers and the music companies which distribute through them don't have to pay, except for the one-off encoder licenses for however many simultaneous encodes they need to run.
Re:Why only Vorbis (link im article) (Score:1, Informative)
Though, you do have to pay for a license to use an AAC encoder, so using this commercially you take your chances (though you get a licensed encoder with iTunes so business can just use that or go buy Coding Technologies encoder). You don't have to pay royalties for your content though.
Re:Even more anal retentive (Score:5, Informative)
Gah!
First of all, it's Matroska and the extension is MKV.
Second, whether AVI is better or worse than Ogg is debatable. Any who has ever written an Ogg (de)muxer curses it's name frequently. It's extremely codec-specific, and the format is rather loosely defined, with no consistent standard way to do much of anything....
AVI has it's limitations, but they are few. Most of the problems people experience with AVI is due entirely to limited software which doesn't properly handle AVIs. The rest of the problems tend to be a result of lack of standards... For instance, Vorbis can fit into AVI just fine, but unfortunately, Xiph didn't define HOW exactly, so everyone has started doing it in their own, mutually incompatible way. Ditto for subtitles, and other meta-data.
So, the biggest problem with AVI is lack of any single official standards authority. Ogg has the same problem, but worse, since Xiph have ignored all efforts to extend Ogg to handle other formats, and now nothing is compatible.
Re:OGG is spreading. (Score:3, Informative)
I suppose if you're happy, that's all that matters, but your personal opinion doesn't really hold up against a double blind test [rjamorim.com]. The summary:
I just get sick of this continuing myth that any modern lossy compression format can sound "twice as good" as any other, or "just as good" at half the bit rate. No proper test has ever borne any of that out, and in fact, it seems like more often than not the formats touted as the best end up doing the worst in these tests. mp3 always seems to come out near the top even when comparing at the same bit rate, at worst in the middle, despite being among the "oldest" formats of the bunch.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:3, Informative)
Better than a simple double-blind test: a (double-blind, of course) triangle test. In a triangle test, each subject is given three samples of two substances and is asked which two are the same, and which he prefers. Answers to the second question are only counted if the first question is correct.
This is used a lot of in beer tastings, in order to help eliminate a little bit of untrustworthiness from the results.