People under the age of 25 are too young to be able to afford cynicism - Diogenes the Pseudo Pesky Cynic
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Wikipedia plans to offer open source video
STANDARDS ADVOCATE the Open Video Alliance has got behind a campaign to enrich Wikipedia articles with video.
Wikipedia walks a lonely path in supporting Theora, an open format which is in contention to be incorporated into HTML5's video tag. This goes against the popular Flash encoded video 'standard' used by sites such as Youtube.
The Open Video Alliance has teamed up with Miro, producer of a free Theora video encoder for both Windows and Mac systems. In the past embedding videos into Wikipedia pages has been fiddly however the two have managed to reduce the whole process down to five simple steps.
This news will both please and infuriate Steve Jobs who has been vocal in his opposition to Adobe's cumbersome technology. The problem is that HTML5 isn't even finalised, let alone supported by web browsers, so until that happens Flash will remain top of the pile.
Worryingly, HTML5 might only move the problem away from Flash to another closed format, H.264. Companies that are used to making money from doing nothing don't like open formats like Theora, with Jobs' Mob voicing 'concerns' with the open standard.
The Open Video Alliance are hoping that by using Wikipedia as a conduit, they will be able to increase Theora's visibility to a point at which companies such as Apple won't be able to run rough-shod over a capable, free and open source format. µ
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Lot of websites using theora videos already and there are already plenty of examples of sites using the new HTML5 Video tags, too
http://wiki.xiph.org/List_of_Theora_videos
x264 is the encoder, the video it produces is h264. A company called MPEG LA collects royalties but has said that internet video will be royalty free until 2015. So if they get everyone to use it, they make a killing in five years.
If you want to maintain freedom of information you have to use open standards.
Bit nasty that miro, I thought I'd give their player a shot and the installer had a 'quick' button and a 'custom' button, and only after you click the custom you really notice that it want to install yahoo toolbar and set yahoo as default search, which you then can deselect, but I expect 75% if those trying it will be fooled and get yahoodwinked.
Not a healthy business model then of that org.
Oh and it's just VLC in a nice webinterface jacket and handy link-ins to various public videos, which isn't that bad but it's not without bugs, and telling people videos are not for their area erroneously to boot.
Wikipedia had such video and audio for quite some time now, not that this cooperation might not be new, but wikipedia using the video is not.
And it shames your name that you did not know that, shows you never browse wikipedia, tisk. :)
Why not use x264?