[mythtv] Musings On Standard File Formats

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 08:45:30AM +0200, Ben Bucksch wrote:

> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> 
> >The AVI file format is pretty much crap.
> I guess there is a reason for WMV ;-).

I don't know much about WMV, and since I don't see any specifications freely
available on the web, and for interoperability purposes it's entirely under
Microsoft's control, it doesn't interest me at all.

> To my knowledge, most common video container formats allow for different
> codecs. Starting from Quicktime, AVI, WMV, even MPEG container (IIRC) and
> RealPlayer's (I guess). Ogg does as well, but the VP3 story shows that the
> codecs need some adaption (not sure how true that is for the other
> containers as well).
>
> *All* of the containers listed above (apart from ogg maybe) can hold 
> video in the MPEG4 codec.

I asked for an alternative which is capable of doing everything the current
format does (which is much more than just providing a place to stuff MPEG-4
video).

If and when there is a One True A/V Container, which is an open standard,
extensible for an individual project's needs, and provides all or most of
what MythTV needs, that might provide some incentive to switch.  But so far,
there just isn't one.

> I am keen on the highest possible quality and told myself that I won't let
> myself locked into any program anymore, so proprietary codecs are no-no
> for archiving. However, the MPEG4 (software) and MPEG2 (hardware) codecs
> used by MythTV are standard (aren't they?), and the only proprietary part
> is the NuppelVideo container, and it's possible to transcode the container
> without data loss / degration of quality, right?  I don't mind much having
> to run a transcoding tool, when I want to export videos, as long as there
> is no quality/data loss.

It sounds like there is no problem then.

Also, I think that 'proprietary' would be an inaccurate description of the
format, considering that anyone can implement it, and the implementation in
MythTV is open source.

-- 
 - mdz