HTML5 for free media: Today on #whatwg

There has been a bit of FUD about Ogg Theora recently [2] [3]. So, over on #whatwg, one day before the W3C Video on the Web Workshop:

11:35:59	* Hixie casually removes Ogg from the spec and sees what happens
11:36:43	* othermaciej_ takes shelter
	...

The editor of the HTML5 draft specification, Ian Hickson (Hixie), sent this message :

I've temporarily removed the requirements on video codecs from the HTML5 spec, since the current text isn't helping us come to a useful interoperable conclusion. When a codec is found that is mutually acceptable to all major parties I will update the spec to require that instead and then reply to all the pending feedback on video codecs.

12:05:02	<kfish> Hixie!
12:11:47	* kfish throws a tantrum on behalf of the free software community
	...

However, the change didn't turn out to be so bad after all. The new text reads:

...; we need a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies.

The previous draft stated no such requirements. As no rationale was given for choosing Ogg, that recommendation was easy to attack. Members of the MPEG LA, the cabal whose members receive money when people use content in MPEG formats, then had a fairly easy job of inciting flamewars on the whatwg list.

The new, clearer wording should allow more productive technical discussion, so that we can actually build an open standard which encourages anyone, anywhere, to publish their videos freely.

12:29:48	* kfish reads the replacement text and revokes the tantrum
12:30:15	<kfish> Hixie, actually you didn't casually remove Ogg, you made the case for Ogg stronger, so thankyou :-)
12:35:37	<Dashiva> "Lift the cat who was amongst the pigeons up and put him back on his pedestal for now."
12:35:40	<Dashiva> Poetic
12:37:49	<Hixie> kfish: :-)

Release: HOgg 0.3.0

Hogg is a commandline tool for manipulating Ogg files. It has subcommands, like hogg chop for cutting out bits of video, hogg info for telling you about the codecs, and hogg dump for hexdumping the packet data. It's basically a re-implementation of most of the stuff in liboggz, but the new features in hogg 0.3.0 such as chopping out a section of a file and adding Ogg Skeleton metadata, are not yet in oggz-tools.

$ hogg help chop
chop: Extract a section (specify start and/or end time)
Usage: hogg chop [options] filename ...

Examples:
  Extract the first minute of file.ogg:
    hogg chop -e 1:00 file.ogg

  Extract from the second to the fifth minute of file.ogg:
    hogg chop -s 2:00 -e 5:00 -o output.ogg file.ogg

  Extract only the Theora video stream, from 02:00 to 05:00, of file.ogg:
    hogg chop -c theora -s 2:00 -e 5:00 -o output.ogg file.ogg

  Extract, specifying SMPTE-25 frame offsets:
    hogg chop -c theora -s smpte-25:00:02:03::12 -e smpte-25:00:05:02::04 -o output.ogg file.ogg

Nevertheless, I'm continuing to work on both liboggz and hogg. liboggz, in pure C, is faster; hogg, in pure (but unoptimised) Haskell, is more correct. I spent a few hours earlier today tracking down a corner case in liboggz, coincidentally triggered by the chopping routines in libannodex. It reminded me that one of my first realizations about Haskell was that its sanity-checker often tells you about forgotten corner cases of algorithms.