Free software and video codecs

[Ben Finney]

mimiyin at gmail.com writes:

> Do you have a recommendation for how I can convert the quicktime and
> flash movies to ogg?

That would produce an inferior result, since the Quicktime and Flash
movies have (I assume) already been converted to a lossy codec
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_compression>. To process that
data again through another lossy codec will cause a poor result,
similar to making a photocopy of a photocopy.

Much better would be to start with the video in its non-lossy form
(either uncompressed, or compressed only with some lossless codec) and
use that as the source for conversion to Dirac or Theora. This is the
same principle as making a photocopy from the original, rather than
from another photocopy.

Presumably the Quicktime and Flash videos were created from some
original lossless data source. Any further encoding should be done
from a source as close to the original as possible.

> I've had a hard time finding conversion apps for the Mac.I'd also be
> happy to turn over the original movies to anyone who can help me
> convert them.

I don't know anything about MacOS applications. I do know that the BBC
developed the "Schroedinger" (Schrödinger) implementation for encoding
video to Dirac; you may want to see if that's available for your OS.

-- 
 \     “I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at |
  `\   the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour …” —F. H. Wales, 1936 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney