- From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:11:35 -0500
Gervase Markham wrote: > "There IS a decoder that I would say is suitable for widespread > shipment. The mainline theora implementation has 3 major problems: 1) > it doesn't implement 100% of the spec. 2) It's not 100% robust against > invalid bitstreams; a maliciously crafted one could crash it. 3) it's > not very fast. derf's theora-exp implementation has an encoder that > doesn't work, but I assume that's irrelevent for a browser. The > _decoder_ fixes all three of those major issues. we haven't done a > formal release of that decoder, but it's in a releasable state - if > someone was seriously interested in giving it widespread use we'd do the > work to release it." > The real key is the format. not the decoder. If the format is well-documented, open, non-proprietary, and high enough quality for the web (for several definitions of "quality") then browser vendors can write their own decoders, as open or closed source. It's nice if there's an existing decoder they can just adopt, but it's by no means necessary, especially for closed source vendors with the resources of Microsoft or Apple. The real question is whether such vendors would add support for such an open format that competes directly with their own proprietary formats. I suspect the answer is no, but I hope I'm wrong about that. -- ?Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo at metalab.unc.edu Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
Received on Friday, 2 March 2007 06:11:35 UTC