[Gnash-dev] 2nd try: How can Internet Archive flash script pick codec to use?

[John Gilmore]

I was at the Archive yesterday, talking with Tracey.  They'd like to
provide all their video and audio in formats that free software can use.
They have huge transcoding engines that can convert it all.  The problem
is their player is Flash-based and just force-feeds the FLV file, which
doesn't work in exclusively free software based systems.  

We need to design a *simple*, *fast*, and *backward compatible* way
that a Flash movie can know what codecs are available to it in Gnash.
Then they can feed their Flash movie a list of URLs and the
corresponding codecs, and the flash movie can pick the best fit from
the list.

By *backward compatible* I mean that if you run the same Flash movie
on Adobe Flash, it fails cleanly (the interface isn't there), so the
movie can assume it should play an FLV file in that case.

The interface can't involve forking a test movie, etc, etc, etc.  It
has to be *simple* and straightforward, or it simply won't happen.
And if it doesn't happen, then people who desparately *want* to 
enable free software to use free codecs, WILL NOT BE ABLE TO.

She'll be putting up some Ogg Theora transcodes soon, that we can test
her flash movie player against, to see if it will just play an Ogg
movie if told to do so.  Building in the pick-a-url-based-on-a-codec
stuff will take a bit longer (we'll have to define it first!).

Thanks...

        John