Misguiding information about MP3 in HTML

[yecril71pl]

Mr Kevin Carlson disclosed the following information to the general public:

everyone involved can agree that the audio element should support MP3

where "everyone involved" means "in WHATWG".

Please somebody stand up and correct this by telling the author and the editor. It is not true at present but publications like Dr Dobb's Journal are quite influential; the whole matter can be perceived as an attempt to influence the group's decision by telling everybody else what decision the group is going to take.

I am no person to refute the incriminated statement because I am not particularly interested in streaming media.

http://www.ddj.com/web-development/206902334?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All

[zcorpan]

It's not clear that everyone does agree that audio should support MP3. In fact the spec only requires WAV support for audio, and doesn't even mention MP3 as far as I can tell.

I think Kevin's statement isn't meant to imply that any particular format is settled for audio, but rather that finding a suitable audio codec is simpler than finding a suitable video codec.

[SneakyWho_am_i]

I would like for the mp3 format to be implemented in it - but I would not like to have to pay for it or see my favourite browser vendor have to pay for it.

Given that and a few other concerns, I'd prefer see some other format instead. I don't know a lot about Ogg but the inclusion of Ogg codecs in Fedora leads me to believe that it's patent-free or royalty free or whatever. Also it can be tuned for high compression and/or reasonable quality. Ogg seems like a good choice.

Even if he got the name of the format wrong (MP3? Really? Would that be wise or would it "close" the internet?) I take from it that nobody seems to be able to agree on the video.
If Ogg provides the same advanatages in video as what I think that it does in audio, then I think that I would choose Ogg for video as well.

After saying all that, I confess I know next to nothing about codecs. I would like something:
- which is not and can not be tied to patents or anything like that in any country
- which everyone can use for free forever
- which offers good compression
- which offers good quality

[lyosha]

Ogg is a container for various media formats (I hate the fact that they all have an ogg extension since I use different media players for video and audio). The Vorbis audio format is a very good patent-free audio format that is on par, and perhaps even superior to mp3. Theora for video, on the other hand, is not even close to modern video formats, so I would say yay for Ogg Vorbis and nay for Ogg Theora. Unfortunately, that leaves us with very few choices for video.

[SneakyWho_am_i]

Ah! Thank you, Lyosha

[Tom Duhamel]

I don't think HTML 5 should propose or require any codec at all. I think HTML 5 should stick with a good method for allowing the use of any codec without forcing or even suggesting one.

Unless I was mislead (which is quite possible), Firefox will have both Vorbis (audio codec) and Theodora (video codec). Both are patent-free, royalty-free, and available as free software.

The only reason why MP3 caught up and became the de facto audio codec back in the mid-90s is because it was mature and ready just in time for the new multimedia boom. Even tough free implementations exist now, MP3 is in fact a closed format. However, several better algorithms have been developed since then. Some of them are general (Vorbis and Theodora are good examples) while others are more specialized.

While different browsers will have a different opinion about what codec should be included, I hope that somehow at least one will become standard enough that it will be safe to use. I hope Vorbis and Theodora will be those, but only time will tell. And since I'm not an expert, perhaps something better already exists which I don't know of yet.