Re: [playogg-discuss] Introductions

[Holmes Wilson]

Hi there,

I think the participation argument cuts both ways, since 1,000 people
making  a video that gets seen by 1 person and 1 person making a video
that gets seen by 1,000 people are both important types of
participation, right?

And so if *either* of those numbers starts changing, I see that as an
important increase in participation.  Some people value
creator-empowerment vs. message-impact differently.  But I'm sure we can
agree they're both important both politically and culturally.

I'm not sure I agree that audio is easier to produce.  On most
cellphones (the cheapest most ubiquitous digital tool) people know where
the video button is, and where to put their video when they're done.

But point taken that audio and video are both priorities here.

Seems like the big issue with audio is that with video we're already
transcoding everything, and nobody cares.  While with audio we're
uploading files to servers without transcoding infrastructure, and
nobody wants a lossy transcode.  So, if you want "fall-back" to the
format everybody uses (e.g. if you want DJs to play your song) that
workflow doesn't all live in your web publishing system, which is a pain.

-Holmes


SMC wrote:
> 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.)
> 
> 
>

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