[ale] questions for the media gurus

[The Don Lachlan]

On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 08:57:36PM -0400, Narahari 'n' Savitha wrote:
> Friends:
> 
> I need to have some questions clarified.
> 
> Audio questions
> ===============================================================
> What is .ogg file, is that opensource equivalent of mp3 ?

Soft of - Ogg is a container. Vorbis is the encoding scheme.

http://www.vorbis.com/faq/#names

> Can iPod/iPhone play .ogg file ?

See above - Ogg is just a container. That said, you cannot play Ogg/Vorbis
natively on iPod. There are projects that provide a new OS for an iPod which
allow you to play them.

On iPhone, there's likely an app.

> Can iTunes/Windows Media Player play .ogg file ?

iTunes: Yes.

http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/about.html

WMP: Yes.

http://www.vorbis.com/setup_windows/

> Can Android phone play .ogg file ?

If not natively, there's like an app.

> Does .ogg file give good compression ?

Vorbis is the encoding scheme and you get better quality at a lower bitrate
compared to an MP3.

http://www.vorbis.com/faq/#_fan

> Video:
> What is vorbis file, is that opensource equivalent of <what> ?
> Can iPod/iPhone play .vorbis file ?
> Can iTunes/Windows Media Player play .vorbis file ?
> Can Android phone play .vorbis file ?
> Does .vorbis file give good compression ?
> Can Myth play vorbis files ?

Vorbis is audio, not video.

Ogg/Theora is an opensource video encoding/container that compares to Mpeg4
or DivX.

http://www.theora.org/

This is all very basic information I got from some very straightforward web
searches. I would suggest you try that first.

> I have videos that have come out of my dvr box(I played and recorded them).
> I need to remove the ad(s).  I want to note down mark-in and mark-out points
> in my Ulead Video Studio (it generates the .cue file if needed I guess)
> Can I provide the video file and the cue file to the ffmpeg program and make
> it trim and join the mark-in and mark-out points to produce video without
> encoding ?

It depends what format the files are in but what you're asking is unlikely.
Most formats will require re-encoding, you can't just slice bits out in the
middle.

-L