I’ve started an unscientific poll on the Ubuntu Screencasts site to gather some opinions and start discussion about video formats.
In the past we’ve tried various options of providing OGG only to OGG, MP3, MP4, and finally OGG and Flash (FLV). Each format and resolution we add increases the workload though. For each format we add there’s the additional CPU overhead on re-encoding, and bandwidth required to upload the resulting files. Which is why now there’s currently only two formats used, OGG (Theora/Vorbis) and Flash (FLV/MP3).
I’ve always wanted to make sure the master OGG video is available because that means we should be able to play them on any Linux distro. However the target for the Ubuntu screencasts isn’t just existing Ubuntu users.
Our target is:-
- Existing Linux users
- Users of other operating systems who might wish to switch to Ubuntu/Linux in the future
- Linux users, who also use other operating systems (such as Windows at work)
For the first we have OGG, the second and third we probably need another option. The question is, what is that option. Unfortunately there is not one video format that works on every platform out of the box. We can assume people might have some basic codecs, but there’s nothing that everyone is guaranteed to have.
That’s why I chose flash. Becuase of all of the nasty codecs, flash (whilst proprietary) is installed on a vast majority of desktops – irrespective of the OS they use. It also has the bonus that it’s a stream-able format which means people don’t need to mess about downloading, they can view the screencast directly in the browser. I don’t actually know if the flash video player works in the free flash plugins gnash and swfdec, but would appreciate if people could test.
On the Ubuntu Podcast made by the UK LoCo team, we discovered that the vast majority of listeners are using iTunes on Windows or Mac, and not as we expected a podcast downloader on Linux. This is an important fact. It means that people who are not necessarily Linux users are listening to our Linux-related content.
In order to make the screencasts work seamlessly with iTunes users, we’d ideally need to support MOV (H264/AAC) files. Then there’s the problem that people who sync their video podcasts from iTunes to their iPods will need a lower resolution version..
So that leaves us with:-
- High res OGG for Linux users
- Embedded flash streaming version
- High res MOV version for iTunes users
- Low res MOV version for iPods
- Some other formats I have not considered?
I’d be happy to carry on just using OGG and FLV, but that is clearly not enough if we want to reach the widest possible audience?
Votes, suggestions, comments, all welcome.
