Re: [playogg-discuss] Introductions

[SMC]

On Tuesday 04 August 2009 12:23:47 Holmes Wilson wrote:
> My name's Holmes Wilson and I'm the new campaigns manager at FSF.
>
> With support for Theora in Firefox and other free browsers, it seems
> like a really exciting time for Ogg Theora.  Wanted to introduce myself
> to the list since I'll be working on that.
>
> One of the first things to figure out is how to measure success here.
> What is the best thing that could happen with Theora video and HTML5?

Not to dump on you, but I really wish people would quit obsessing over the 
chance to turn the internet into TV...

This isn't about opposition to video on the web, though - this is about my
personal irritation with the way everyone forgets there's also an <audio> tag 
in HTML5, too.  Here's why this bugs me (and how it's relevant to your goals):

I tend to assume that the Free Software Foundation would agree with my own 
view that the internet is not about "consumers", but about *participants*.  
The focus then shouldn't be so much on how much video (or audio, remember) is 
"consumed" by browsers on the web but rather how much material people are 
actually making available in legally-free form AND how many people are 
involved; 1000 people each making available one or two audio or video 
recordings is probably a much bigger deal than a single "person" or 
corporation making millions of recordings available, in terms of 
"participation".  Similarly, a single well-equipped art student producing a 
single impressive Ogg Theora video (for example) is nonetheless less 
impressively participatory than seeing a large collection of amateur and 
professional audio Oggcasts popping up.

It's worth noting that it's a heck of a lot easier for someone to homebrew 
some <audio> content than to produce their own <video>, which is both more 
technically challenging to make and requires a higher-priced set of equipment 
if one wants to go beyond, say, allegedly-hilarious cellphone videos of 
drunken frat boys or playing kittens.  All of the discussion so far (here and 
elsewhere online) seems to imply that only <video> is really worth the effort, 
though.  Similarly, Ogg Vorbis support in hardware (e.g. portable audio 
players) is already out there to some extent, and will likely spread more 
easily at first than Ogg Theora video implementations, especially if plenty of 
Ogg Vorbis audio content is encouraged.  Vorbis support will be needed anyway 
prior to Ogg Theora video unless someone wants to make a "silent movie" Theora 
player.

So - to cap off my earnest if slightly ranty comment here and actually answer 
your question:

In my opinion, the best thing that could happen with Ogg Theora is successful 
encouragement of participants to generate "content" in the Ogg formats.  The 
more people participate in the generation of material to pick from, the more 
demand for support for legally-free formats will grow.  In that regard I'd 
personally like to see a lot more encouragement for audio-only content as 
well, lest people think they can't participate without a video studio...

(Wider and better support for encoding in Vorbis and Theora would be a big 
help, too, but I think that's less of a problem.)