Fianna Fail Video format

[happysmileman]

I sent the following message to Fianna Fail online:

I would like to point out that most of your videos, especially the newer ones, are available only as ".wmv" (Windows Media Video) files and the remainder are available as ".wmv" and ".mov" (Apple Quicktime Movies).

I would like to point out that people who do not use a Windows operating system cannot play the ".wmv" files and it is difficult to get a player to play ".mov" files on Linux, this means that people who choose not to use Windows or Apple (a number which is growing rapidly, especially since many people are beginning to distrust Windows and are realizing that there are free alternatives) are not able to view your videos unless they download special codecs, which as well as being hard to find are illegal in many countries (I am not sure about Ireland).

I suggest you make your videos available in more widely accepted formats, such as MP4, or, more preferably, ".ogg". This would make your software more available to users of all operating systems.



What do you think?

[aidanr]

isn't mp4 a container, not a codec?
it's not difficult to play .mov or .wmv on linux, but hey if you can get them to provide a .ogg version of their stuff then good for you

[dueyfinster]

Let me know how this goes. I have been recently mailing Government websites also, and for the most, the response is good. I don't expect them to use odf, vorbis or theora anytime soon, but hopefully long term (maybe like Dublin Port Tunnel long term?). I mailed them over lack of adherence to Web Standards (http://www.w3c.org), which is just as important as the media formats above.

On the upside, Sun released all their videos in Theora for the announcement of Java (http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/) going under the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).

Thanks!

[AndrewMc]

I sent the following message to Fianna Fail online:

I would like to point out that most of your videos, especially the newer ones, are available only as ".wmv" (Windows Media Video) files and the remainder are available as ".wmv" and ".mov" (Apple Quicktime Movies).

This would be the same Fianna Fáil who had the Irish presidency of the EU sponsored by Microsoft (http://lwn.net/Articles/85301/) and exacerbated the EU software patents problem? ](*,)

[happysmileman]

Surprisingly... I didn't get a single reply