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| Interview with Richard Hulse of Radio New Zealand, on the decision to offer Ogg Vorbis |
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Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 03:27 PM EDT
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When I read that Radio New Zealand had just decided to start adding Ogg Vorbis files
to their online offerings, I was curious. How do folks make such decisions? I surely wish everyone would do what Radio New Zealand has just done. So I asked Richard Hulse of Radio New Zealand, the station's media manager, to tell me how they came to decide to add Ogg Vorbis to their collection of interviews and broadcasts, already offered as MP3s and in Windows Media Audio. His answers are instructive, and you may find it helpful to note his suggestions on how to effectively request other sites to offer Ogg Vorbis files. And if any of you wish to respond to his requests for help with a how-to, please feel free to lend a hand to make this a success.
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PJ: Please tell us about Radio NZ, and what you do there.
RH: Radio New Zealand is New Zealand's state-funded public radio broadcaster. We have two main domestic networks that broadcast on AM and FM throughout the country, and a shortwave service targeted at the South Pacific. A subsidiary company, Sound Archives / Ngā Taonga Kōrero is responsible for maintaining an audio archive of radio in New Zealand.
I am the New Media Manager, and my role is to guide the company's internet activities and keep the website running.
PJ: What formats do you use at the moment and why?
RH: Up until now we've used only Windows Media Audio, and MP3. The reasons are pragmatic, both technically and from a business perspective.
We've only had funding for an official internet presence since 2004, and the budget is quite small compared with other Public Broadcasters, so we've got to use that effectively as possible. We looked at the site traffic prior to re-launch, and chose the formats based on what systems our visitors used.
Potential users of our site fell into two distinct groups. The first group was Windows users, making up 94% of our visitors, so we made the primary format Windows Media Audio. This meant that for the vast majority of users all they had to do was click on a link, and the audio played. It also meant that this group was unlikely to need help - we don't have the resources to handle a huge amount of email.
The second group was Mac and GNU/Linux users. We added a feature to the site that allowed them to set a preference via a cookie, and clicking on the same link as a Windows user would serve them a pls (playlist) file with an MP3 link in it. This meant the on-demand content was seamless for most of our visitors.
The only problem was that we were unable to duplicate this for live streams, which were (and still are) Windows Media only. When we started planning the new site, it was too costly to install infrastructure that would scale for both formats. (We are looking at other options at the moment.)
Using a single format for all platforms meant that some assembly was required for non-Windows systems, but I figured that with most Windows users sorted, and on-demand content running for both groups, we could cope with helping any Mac and GNU/Linux users that got stuck.
This worked out fine until about two years ago, when a new breed of visitor arrived: the first time Mac and GNU/Linux user. These people don't necessarily have the technical skills to get the streaming going on their own, and we've had more people asking for help as a result. This change has really got me thinking about how to make the user-experience as seamless as possible for everyone.
PJ: What caused you to introduce Ogg files? Was it the result of audience requests?
RH: I have had a handful of emails every year asking if we would consider offering Ogg and a higher number telling us off for using 'nasty proprietary formats'.
But it's actually been on the planning table for a while - the StreamingNet content delivery network (CDN) we use was designed to support it from the day we launched - the main issue for us was storing audio in three formats.
Because of a tight budget we initially had to focus on just two most popular formats, but recent changes to the CDN have meant we've been able to increase storage in a cost-neutral way, and so now we can add Ogg.
As part of this change we are improving the way audio is displayed, with all three audio formats seen on the page, and I hope this will mean people can get audio that will play on their system without having to download anything or email us for help.
It also gives people a choice, and opens up the content to those who cannot or do not wish to install non-free codecs on their system.
As far the timing goes, a month or so back our Saturday Morning programme arranged to interview Richard Stallman during his NZ visit. He asked that we make the interview available in Ogg Vorbis format, which we were happy to do, and I thought it would be a good chance to see if there was wider support. So we opted to make the whole show available in Ogg, and a listener also contributed a transcript of Richard's interview which we agreed to release under a CC license, which is also a first for us.
We are in the process of rolling it out to other shows now, and in a few weeks I'll be setting up rss feeds with Vorbis files as enclosures in addition to the normal MP3 feeds.
It has also been influenced by the changing mix of platforms. In the last month our traffic was divided up thus:
Windows, 89.43%, Mac, 8.79%, and GNU/Linux 1.49%.
The others includes the iPhone and Play Station 3, which is very different to what it was 3 years ago. Who knows what'll be popular format-wise in a year or two? The long-term trend appears to be a very slow decline in Windows users browsing the site, and an increase in everything else. Technology can change very fast, so our infrastructure has been designed to make it easy for us to add formats as the need arises.
I should add that we aren't able to do Ogg for a small proportion of content where we don't have rights to allow downloads.
PJ: Do you provide any information for the audience on how to access and play Ogg files, or is it left to them?
RH: We have a basic page which explains about the different formats and links to the Free Software Foundation's how to page. I'd like to add our own page when I have time. Perhaps the community would like to help out ? :-)
PJ: What is the reaction so far?
RH: It has been a mixed bag, to be honest. We've had emails congratulating us for doing it, and saying it'd be great if we continue. At the other extreme were emails criticizing us for not immediately offering everything in free, open formats.
PJ: Is this a trial? If the numbers are not any greater than they currently are, might you drop Ogg Vorbis?
RH: We've already done the technical trials, so this is the real thing. We've started by adding Ogg Vorbis to our two most popular (for web audio) programmes - Saturday Morning with Kim Hill and Nine to Noon with Kathryn Ryan. Next week I'll be adding our news flagship, Morning Report, and The Darwin Lectures will be the first feature programme to use the format.
One of the great things about Public Radio is that you can take a longer view of things. You can put something in place for the future, looking to changes that you see on the horizon. So at this stage I am not concerned about the number of downloads - new services are not always popular when you first introduce them. For example, we had only 300 subscribers to our podcast feeds in the second month of offering the service. Two years on there are over 20,000 people who download about 250,000 items every month. If you played all that audio end-to-end 24/7 it would run for nearly 18 months.
I do hope that people use the Ogg files because apart from the freedom aspect, the quality is better than MP3 for the same data rate. I'll be happy if we get up to a couple of percent by the end of the year.
PJ: Do you do video also ever? If so, will you be doing Theora?
RH: We have done video in the past for special events - the most notable being a music event we sponsored at a Wellington Bar. This was simulcast on radio, the web in video and audio, and it was also picked up by a couple of regional TV channels. But these are very rare as we are a radio broadcaster.
We did once install a studio cam over our summer for Matinee Idle (that is how it is spelt), which is a very popular show featuring strange and often previously unheard music. The host described the cam as "as interesting as watching paint dry", but we still had a few thousand unique viewers over the show's 4 week season.
The main problem with video is that often we are unable to get rights to allow downloads, although I am always open on the question of formats.
PJ: Does RNZ use much free software?
RH: All our web servers (4) are GNU/Linux, and our Content Management System (MySource Matrix) is also GNU GPL, although we purchase commercial support for it. The podcast servers on our CDN are GNU/Linux, and the same goes for some tools we run internally built in PHP and Ruby on Rails.
The software that interfaces between our internal proprietary enterprise broadcast systems (audio and text) and the CMS is also built using free software (Perl). In this case, the main reason is that we have complete control (i.e. freedom) to modify and improve the software, and this is one of the keys to constantly improving the site - we can make small incremental changes as often as they are needed.
PJ: You mention getting two kinds of emails asking for Ogg Vorbis. If my
readers wanted their radio station to add Ogg Vorbis, what kind of email
works the best?
RH: A polite one where the writer has thought about the issues from my perspective. I'll explain a bit more.
A Public Broadcaster may have legislative imperatives (e.g. Radio NZ has a charter, so does the BBC). A commercial broadcaster will have financial drivers (so do the public ones), and shareholder expectations to meet. A Broadcaster will have legal people who (no offense intended) are risk averse, in whatever they perceive is risky. Organisations that are run in a business-like way have to make pragmatic choices about how resources are used. Much of the information they use to make decisions may not be available to the public, so you cannot always assume that how things appear is how they actually are.
As a home user of GNU/Linux, you can make the choice to avoid all non-free software. You will be willing to work around some of the problems this creates. Businesses are complex systems, and making changes are much more difficult. Replacing a single desktop application may be relatively trivial. Replacing a key broadcast application around which the company has developed a great deal of knowledge capital, while retaining that capital, is another thing entirely.
I'll give a practical example. Because of budgetary constraints, I made the choice to initially only offer Radio NZ programmes for up to 4 weeks on our website, after which they were removed. So even though we were cutting off The Long Tail of content use, it enabled us to offer a greater variety and number of programmes. I should note that the CDN changes mentioned above mean that we are slowing removing this time limitation.
Money might be a real problem.
Having said that, there is also a chance that no explicit decision on a particular subject (like file formats) has been made. Maybe no-one has thought about it all. Often, a company will follow the path of least resistance because that is the cheapest and simplest option.
With all that in mind, here is a list.
0. Try to find out who the best person is to send your email or letter to. Make a phone call to find out.
Sending an email to webmaster@company might work (it will at RNZ), but many companies have gate-keepers and hierarchy that make it hard to get direct access to decision-makers.
1. Ask questions, rather than make demands, and be clear about what you'd like.
For example, "I was wondering if you would consider offering some of the your audio in Ogg Vorbis format.", instead of "You should be offering all your audio in a free format."
2. Don't assume that the person will understand terms you use.
Not everyone knows what 'free' means in the context of audio formats. They might think you want free access to their content, or the right to give it away for free.
3. Explain why this is important to you personally.
E.g. "The computer I use does not support the formats you currently have on offer, and I would really like to listen to your programmes." instead of "Your stupid proprietary formats are evil, and I don't allow anything evil on my computer."
4. Give examples of similar companies that already do what you are asking for.
E.g. "While this isn't a mainstream format, I know of at least two public broadcaster that support it on an on-going basis (CBC and Radio NZ)."
5. I think it is important when making a request to sign off with your full name, and I would also check you signature line - I know some people who won't reply to anyone who looks like an "extremist". Apart from that, the email does not have to be written in formal business style.
6. Don't use emotive or abusive language, and I would avoid saying that it is immoral to not offer free formats.
The word 'immoral' can carry many different meanings to a reader, and it might be taken personally.
7. If you get a reply, try to understand the problems the other party has, and thank them for taking the time to respond.
If you get a positive response, you may be offer links to useful resources. If you blog about your experience, especially if it is positive, I'd send an email with the link as a courtesy.
8. If a broadcaster does make a change, please write and thank them explaining how the change helped you.
If a decision-maker has to write a report on the uptake of a new format on the website, a supply of anecdotes can be helpful.
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| Authored by: artp on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 04:06 PM EDT |
Summary of correction in title, please
eror -> error
---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: artp on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 04:17 PM EDT |
Change the Title block, please
HTML instructions are under the text input
box and at Groklaw's own HTML How
To page.
Oh, and don't forget to stay Off Topic! ---
Userfriendly
on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 04:19 PM EDT |
"although we purchase commercial support for it"
Hmm, but that's not a bad thing at all. Quite a good one really.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: bbaston on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 04:31 PM EDT |
Mention the article's title please.
---
IMBW, IANAL2, IMHO, IAVO
imaybewrong, iamnotalawyertoo, inmyhumbleopinion, iamveryold[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 05:06 PM EDT |
I know of only the NPR program "Democracy Now" which is presently
offering both its audio and its video downloads in Ogg format. Does anyone know
of any others in the US???
Reach it by clicking "+more formats" on their home page,
(democracynow.org) then either "+more video formats" or "+more
audio formats" on the link page. Ogg Vorbis audio features together with
other formats on the central panel of the audio page, but the Ogg Theora
download is only on the left side-bar of the video page.
--Simfox
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 06:25 PM EDT |
| Thanks, PJ. That was a really good interview. The transcript shows that RH
"gets it."
I really like Ogg Vorbis. As an audiophile I rate it "better
than MP3" and better than FLAC, for different reasons.
The problem with
FLAC, I think, has to do with the hardware DAC's used to decode it: It is tinny
and bright, and may set ones teeth on edge on high-end equipment. I expect the
problem to be solved some day (PCM WAV's sound OK, but they are space hogs, as
we all know).
Still, though, for Internet streaming, Ogg Vorbis is
definitely the right solution. Flexible and free, it is a solved
problem.
If my audio equipment were working, I'd try to pick up RNZ on my
FOSS-based
Squeezebox.
---
"The choice to exact consideration in the form of
compliance with the open source requirements..., is entitled to no less legal
recognition." --US CAFC [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Crocodile_Dundee on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 11:02 PM EDT |
I'm certainly going to be listening to their science broadcasts.
I'm very impressed with the quality of the audio -- I haven't checked the bit
rate, so I can't compare it with Australia's ABC podcasts <shrug>
I may take his advice in how to approach other networks and approach our
national broadcaster.
---
---
That's not a law suit. *THIS* is a law suit![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 11:45 PM EDT |
Very nice interview, PJ. Something original - who would have thought of it? You
asked all the right questions, then kept your mouth shut. I found Richard
Hulse's answers very interesting, and I certainly appreciate him taking the time
to do this interview. The only question that remains, then, is when will you
make the Ogg Vorbis of the interview available? (Just kidding - I'm sure it was
an email interview, or you would have posted the Ogg file)[ Reply to This | # ]
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- it could be done - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 12:46 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 04:05 AM EDT |
for this inside look at a real live use of ogg.
Radio NZ is a local icon, with over 70 years' history.
Not quite BBC, neither strained thru the shortwaves.
Reforms of 20 years ago stripped away the commercial arm,
leaving the public service channels as "not for profit" versions
of "state owned enterprises". Richard Hulse has to be a
pragmatist and a businessman. There are wages, rents,
electricity bills to be paid. Free as in beer software might
be a small figure to balance against the cost of leaving
your material on line for a longer time.
Free as in speech software could be useful to a public
service broadcaster, if your technical staff were not fully
trained and busy operating and maintaining the existing
proprietary installation. (Whatever happened to Dirac?)
When 94% of your users are MS Windows, you can't just drop .wma.
> ... about two years ago, when a new breed of visitor arrived:
> the first time Mac and GNU/Linux user. These people don't
> necessarily have the technical skills to get the streaming going
> on their own, and we've had more people asking for help as a result.
> This change has really got me thinking about how to make the
> user-experience as seamless as possible for everyone.
I've had experience trying to persuade Windows users to
a) download, and
b) configure file and mimetypes,
so that VLC can handle my QuickTime streams. It's not funny
when a Vista update breaks the video drivers so sound plays
to a black screen.
It's sad too that RH appears to have had mail from the angry fringe
of the community. Kudos to him for remaining professional.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: grouch on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 04:55 AM EDT |
I'll give a practical example. Because of budgetary
constraints, I made the choice to initially only offer Radio NZ programmes for
up to 4 weeks on our website, after which they were removed. So even though we
were cutting off The Long Tail of content use, it enabled us to offer a greater
variety and number of programmes. I should note that the CDN changes mentioned
above mean that we are slowing removing this time limitation.
-- Richard
Hulse
Perhaps someone with a better connection than I could
check
the
wayback machine
to see if any audio files were archived. The
Radio New Zealand robots.txt file
disallows /podcasts but maybe some of the files Mr. Hulse mentioned as
being offered for download were archived there. It seems a terrible shame to
lose bits of digital history because of something as mundane as storage.
A
local radio station operator donates considerable resources to broadcast the
local high school's varsity football games. (Certainly, the station gains a lot
of goodwill, listeners and local advertisers, but that doesn't diminish the
donation). At the end of my 3rd year of videotaping these games for the coaches,
I was shocked to discover that there is no archive of the radio broadcasts by
the very talented 'play-by-play' man. The irretrievable loss in this day of
"consumer" terabyte hard drives is, well, shocking.
In the case of Radio New
Zealand's past audio offerings, these still might be retrieved. When William
Patry reposted his blog, I seem to recall that he was helped by readers of his
blog to reassemble missing pieces. Mr. Hulse seems to have a nice long-term
view; maybe a little box on the website requesting listeners send in specific,
old, missing files would do the job.
Thanks Mr. Hulse and PJ for presenting
all this helpful information!
---
-- grouch
GNU/Linux obeys you.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 07:17 AM EDT |
Interesting stuff.
I was the person responsible for putting Virgin Radio UK's live streams into Ogg
Vorbis in 2002. When I last checked (I left the station last year), the station
had around 20 concurrent listeners on Ogg Vorbis, and over 10,000 concurrent
listeners on streaming MP3. That's notwithstanding the fact that Virgin Radio's
Ogg Vorbis is a preset in most Linux media players.
For Virgin Radio, the Ogg support was simply the cost of a server, and the time
of one of our IT people. I hope, for Radio New Zealand's sake, it wasn't any
more than that.
James Cridland (ex Virgin Radio)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 09:10 AM EDT |
The article links to a FSF website which makes the following claim:
Unlike MP3, Ogg Vorbis is not restricted by patents. Microsoft had
to pay
$1.5 billion after being sued for using MP3 without a license. With
Ogg
Vorbis, they would have been safe!
That is an absolute untruth.
MP3 was covered by about 200 known patents,
and anybody can buy a license to
these patents rather cheaply, which
Microsoft did. Ogg Vorbis is covered by
exactly zero known patents, so you
don't need to buy a license. It was believed
that MP3 was free from any other
patent claims, just as the FSF believes that
Ogg Vorbis is free from any other
patent claims. However, if Microsoft uses
some format, whether
it is MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, it is unavoidable that some
patent troll will come out
with a patent or two and sue them for 1.5 billion
dollars.
It would be correct to say that Microsoft could have saved
themselves maybe
80 million dollars in license fees by going with Ogg Vorbis,
but they would
have been sued for patent infringement just the same.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Ogg, MP3 and patents - Authored by: davidf on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 03:31 PM EDT
- Eh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 05:29 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 09:25 AM EDT |
Especially the evil and immoral hyperbole. If anything, he's being too polite
when he says: "The word 'immoral' can carry many different meanings to a
reader, and it might be taken personally." It's an insult and no way to
persuade them towards you position. Some good examples of evil and immorality:
murder, rape, child molestation, genocide. If you feel the need to attack MS or
proprietary software, fine, say patents have a pernicious effect on innovation,
or monopolies are bad for the economy, or DRM undermines fair use rights (even
to the point of copying your own CDs to your own mp3 player!). But if you throw
around 'evil', it just makes you look immature or insane. Either of which,
actually, would be reasonable conclusions.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Observer on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 02:59 PM EDT |
| PJ, I wish we could make that interview required reading for ANY users of FOSS
software!
I hate to admit that I've written a couple of flames aimed at
broadcasters in the past, and found that the responses were less than helpful.
I've also written some polite requests for help getting free formats, and while
I didn't always get what I wanted (OGG), I usually got an encouraging response
from the technical people on the site. The reasons were always more complicated
than they might seem at first, such as technical people who WANTED to implement
alternative formats, but were prevented by high up corporate standards, or
budget constraints or whatever. A couple even pointed me to back doors
(unpublished links?) where I could get the same content in different ways (e.g.,
bypassing active-X doohickeys to get right to the media stream).
However, I
think that more and more sites are beginning to see the same trends mentioned
here -- with non-MS users increasing at a steady rate, and more educated users
asking for alternatives. More of the technical support people are understanding
the issues, and their corporate bosses are starting to listen to them. I think
we're still a long way from seeing OGG being as ubiquitous as MP3, but we're
making progress.
(I just wish we could convince the music player makers to
read other formats than Windows or MP3. :-/)
---
The Observer [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 04:23 PM EDT |
Great article, PJ, thank you.
One of the most valuable bits is Richard
Hulse's advice at the end. Every Free Software advocate should read it. The ones
who actually damage Free Software, by sounding like extremists, should be locked
in solitary confinement with a copy of Hulse's advice and allowed out on parole
only after they have memorized it and promised to follow it.
And, by the
way, the offenders who should be locked away with a copy of Hulse's advice
constitute a majority of Free Software advocates. As Hulse
said:
"I have had a handful of emails every year asking if we would
consider offering Ogg and a higher number telling us off for using 'nasty
proprietary formats'"
Most Free Software advocates still don't "get
it". [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 01:06 AM EDT |
First of all, I like the idea of OSS. Then there's the
...but.
Research by jan Ozer shows that there are only 4 high quality
video
formats that are usable for the internet; because of internet user's
expectations.
Here are the four, 2 different Adobe VP6s.
Microsoft's Silverlight VC-1,
and H.264. Notice the size/resolution of the
video as well as the clarity. This
is the required size and quality for
engaging video, whether it's corporate
video, entertainment or educational
video:
Here's the comparison - notice, no more "postage stamp" video;
yes this
is the resolution that is possible now:
Silverlight:
http://www.doceo.com/silverlight/test.html
H.264:
http://www.doceo.com/h264/test.html
VP6:
http://www.doceo.com/flv/test.html
VP6-S:
http://www.doceo.com/flvs/test.html [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Theora? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 01:28 AM EDT
- Theora? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 10:38 AM EDT
- Theora? - Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 12:58 PM EDT
- Theora? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 01:32 AM EDT
- Theora? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 11:44 AM EDT
- advert - Authored by: grouch on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 03:38 AM EDT
- advert - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 10:31 AM EDT
- advert - Authored by: grouch on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 01:57 PM EDT
- advert - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 03:03 PM EDT
- advert - Authored by: grouch on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 04:50 PM EDT
- advert - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 27 2008 @ 06:13 AM EDT
- advert - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 27 2008 @ 10:22 AM EDT
- advert - Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 03:27 PM EDT
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| Authored by: stomfi on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 09:35 AM EDT |
Windows, 89.43%, Mac, 8.79%, and GNU/Linux 1.49%
This is in New Zealand for listening to the Radio. Not what most people do with
a computer. I wonder what percentage of users do listen to streaming radio.
Notice he also mentions a new breed of uninformed Linux users.
Maybe those American Linux desktop usage figures need to be re-examined.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 04:57 PM EDT |
Hi Folks.
Thanks for all the comments.
Here are a few comments of my own on issues raised.
1. Commercial support.
I probably should have used the word 'and' instead of 'although'. Commercial
support is not a concession, just a reality if you don't have the expertise
in-house and need 24/7 support and 5 x 9s up-time!
2. FLAC
We get a lot of content from other public broadcasters in the FLAC format. 'L'
is for lossless, which it is. If you can hear the difference after a single pass
through FLAC then something else must be going on.
3. Quality settings
The setting we use for the encoder are:
--bitrate 128 --downmix --quality 2
4. The 'Angry Fringe'
As a general rule, the threshold that moves people to send a complaint is much
lower than for a compliment.
Complaints can be a useful barometer of opinion, you just have to wade through
the emotion and work out what is really bugging the writer.
The trick is to not react to genuinely 'fringe' comments, or what statisticians
would call outliers.
5. Archives
Virtually everything we broadcast and publish to the web is saved somewhere. We
have our own copy of most stuff for internal use, whereas Sound Archives are
keeping an historical record.
As I hinted, we no longer have storage issues, and it is just a matter of time
before we start adding archives of content to programmes. Some already have an
archive page.
6. Patents on Ogg
There are no known patents on Ogg. That is not to say that something won't be
found in the future. Our main reason for implementing this is to cater for
demand.
Looking at the latest logs I am seeing about 0.5% of content is downloaded in
Ogg, which is not bad as it is only available on a couple of programme so far.
There is also another project in the works, which I can't talk about at the
moment, so you'll have to watch this space!
7. Numbers of visitors
The numbers I cited are for overall visitors to our site and including on-demand
content), so at a guess those could be taken as 'desktop' users.
I am not able to tell what the proportions are for podcasts.
Richard Hulse
Radio NZ
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 27 2008 @ 05:54 AM EDT |
Well, that certainly seems to be a reasonable reply. I too will be fighting
SliverBlight Silverlight with all means at my disposal. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Sean DALY on Friday, August 29 2008 @ 04:55 AM EDT |
This interview is very interesting and the constraints Mr. Hulse mentions are
comparable to those faced by business.
To me, a key advantage of the Ogg container is in metadata. Anyone dealing with
a large repository of audio or video or even images is faced with this problem.
The ability to store metadata directly in the media file drastically simplifies
storage and delivery architecture as well as simplifying indexing and search.
Several tools exist for easily extracting, adding, and modifying Ogg metadata
from scripts, simplifying the synchronisation of external database metadata with
internal metadata.
Most if not all of the Ogg interviews we have done for Groklaw contain metadata
with the date and place of the interview, Groklaw's site address, and the CC
license. Listeners using a metadata-aware player such as VLC see the title of
the interview displayed.
The large search engines and particularly Google have unfortunately been slow to
index Ogg and Theora metadata (not to mention EXIF image metadata), but that
could change in the years to come as the mass of files online grows...
Sean
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