What are your thoughts on Free Formats?

[John.Michael.Kane]

What are your feelings on the use of the "Free Formats", and how many folks use them. i see that there are replacements for the use of a few known non free codec's. also feel free to list any free codec's you use.

[matthew]

I like the idea. All the music on my hard drive came from my own cd's that I have ripped. I started the task on Windows 2 years ago with mp3's. I am still using mp3's solely because I already had over 2000 songs in that format and because I have an mp3 player that will only use mp3's or wma's.

If I had it to do over I would:
1) rip everything using ogg because it is smaller, just as good of quality, and is not a proprietary format
2) buy a portable music player that supports the ogg format

If I someday find myself with tons of time on my hands and extra money I'll just buy a new music player and start over...but with about 3000 songs already saved as mp3's that isn't likely to happen soon (or maybe ever).

Finally, on the idea of free formats in general. I wish I had heard about them earlier and begun with them. Like all free formats I think they are a great idea both philosophically and practically.

[xequence]

I like the idea though I only have 3 cds, so most of my music comes from bittorent, and I dont get much choice out of MP3 for lossy.

Even if I did, my stupid sony player only supports mp3 and atrac3 (WHICH IS HORRIBLE, DONT EVER USE IT :P)

[az]

I think it is just a matter of time that things like ogg go mainstream. For example, you get a choice of downloading an MP3 for 99 cents or an ogg for 79 cents. You make up the difference in the cost of buying a media player than can handle ogg over the year.


I am not really sure how much mp3licencing.com gets for every mp3 sold, but I think people would jump at it if it were even something like a 5 cent savings.

[xequence]

I think it is just a matter of time that things like ogg go mainstream. For example, you get a choice of downloading an MP3 for 99 cents or an ogg for 79 cents. You make up the difference in the cost of buying a media player than can handle ogg over the year.

Most music stores dont even use mp3... Its AAC for iTunes, WMA for everything else except smaller stores who use MP3.

And ive only ever seen one album on a torrent site in OGG. There ARE many FLAC lossless albums on sites though. FLAC is open, right?

[UbuWu]

I will start to use ogg and flac as soon as iPods can play them or someone other comes up with an even more attractive portable music player that can play them and I have the money to buy it...

[MetalMusicAddict]

FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/), Vorbis (http://www.vorbis.com/) and XviD (http://www.xvid.org/) are awesome but I think they need more widespread hardware support. Its ok but could be better.

I own a iRiver H340 (http://www.iriver.com/html/product/prpa_product.asp?pidx=42). It plays .ogg (vorbis) audio and Phillips DVP 642 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000204SWE/102-4562083-1147347?v=glance) DVD player that plays just about every video/audio format under the sun.

I own over 1000 CDs and have been looking at converting them to .ogg but 2 things stop me.
1. I already have them in hi-bitrate mp3s so theres no real benefit on quality/size. 2. With portable payers .ogg takes more cpu to decode so battery life goes faster.

I do know Ill eventually go to .ogg (vorbis).

FYI: .ogg is really just a container like .avi where multiple codecs can be used. Ive made video in .ogg with XviD (http://www.xvid.org/) and Vorbis (http://www.vorbis.com/).

[Brunellus]

The "official" ubuntu line seems to be that restricted-formats support is a "legacy" issue.

I tend to support this. Any encoding I do for my own use, I use free formats, primarily ogg vorbis. I should be better about using .png for images, too....

[poofyhairguy]

I use vorbis for things that I don't plan to put on my MP3 player (something I would only burn to CDs) and I've played with Xvid. Thats a great format there.

[occy8]

my portable cd player plays only mp3, my flash mp3 player too, but maybe someone writes a new bios for that one. Even though I support the idea there is no point right now, unless I want to play it on the computer only.

[Sirin]

I wonder, why are there no encoders for MPEG-4 AAC? I need them for my iPod. ;)