Didn't mean to start a format war, I don't claim any given format is
technically superior, only that there are great advantages to open
formats and open software. As such, here is my response to your arguments:
If you want to know what's wrong with closed formats, take a look at a
.MSP image file (if you can find a system running Windows 2.1, the last
that had a viewer), or try to watch an Autodesk movie (you'll have to
find an old Windows 3.0 system, and try to find a licensed player, since
the right-to-use of the "free" player went away over 10 years ago). The
fact is that another company CANNOT take the place of a defunct
multimedia company, the defunct company still holds patents/copyrights,
may not have ever published the format, and there's no way to obtain a
license from a non-existent entity. Furthermore, the company may not go
out of business, they may just decide they don't like the format anymore
(like the MSP format). If the company that owns the format decides to
de-support it, you're completely out of luck, since nobody else can
write applications using that format. The other problem that arises is
patents on the format, this happened to MP3 a few years ago when the
company that developed the algorithms (and GAVE them to the MPEG-1
committee) asserted patent rights to all MP3 audio, and began charging
licensing fees to developers of software that plays MP3. Any format
owner could do the same, or even use their patent rights to force all
competing players to stop playing "their" format. There's nothing that
could stop them, and that's part of why media players on Linux often
don't play some formats, Microsoft formats, in particular, are both
patented, and owned by a company that's shown they are more than willing
to use those patents to eliminate all players on non-Microsoft platforms
(or better yet, eliminate the competing platform entirely).
Closed multimedia formats are not available to free/open-source
developers. We cannot pay for a patent license, cannot purchase the
format documentation (if it's available), and choose not to make
ourselves subject to the whims of another entity. This means that if a
site is built using closed formats, chances are that there are not any
F/OSS solutions available to support the site, so the site-builder is
beholden to whichever proprietary company owns the format they choose.
Choosing Flash means putting considerable control over your site's
future in the hands of Macromedia, many people find that unsettling.
We don't have a different format from each media creator because the
market already declined that model, the companies tried that around
1992-93 and again in 1996-97, and it flopped completely. Sony, in
particular, tries to create a new Sony-owned "standard" every few years
(MemoryStick, BetaMax, SDRM, SVBS, Blu-Ray, etc...), fortunately, they
generally fail, and in other cases, the other market giants eventually
force the "standard" open, so they can compete on even ground. There's
nothing wrong with having a wide variety of media players, that's called
competition, and it's a good thing. The problem is if every player uses
a different format, and that's when things get bad. Committing to open
formats helps to prevent every player from having their own format,
since once an open format is widespread, all competing formats tend to
die out.
I don't know what businesses you deal with, but most of the businesses I
deal with are looking for global market expansion, and hearing that 30%
of the world cannot view their "cool new site" has an impact; it may not
make the final decision, but it does have an impact.
If you want an alternative to Flash, it DOES exist, it's called SVG,
it's a W3C standard, and it's completely open. The tools to work with
SVG are rapidly approaching parity with Macromedia's development tool,
and there are a number of processing pipelines available to SVG that
Flash could never use (ever try to apply an XSL stylesheet to Flash, for
country-specific translations, for instance). Sure, the F/OSS software
to create SVG still needs work, but solutions do exist, and there are a
couple of proprietary solutions that can create SVG equivalent to about
90% of the flash sites on the web.
IE plays SVG out of the box too, you just have to download the Adobe SVG
plugin (you have to download the Flash plugin on new systems too,
because the one shipping with Windows is outdated, and most sites
require the newer plugin, since content creators are *required* to
continually "upgrade" to the latest Macromedia version or lose
support). The support for viewing SVG on Linux/Mac,etc... is similar to
the support for playing Flash, so the current state of SVG support is
equivalent to the current state of Flash support. The near-term
prospects for SVG support on various platforms is very good, since the
code being worked on for Firefox 1.1 will work everywhere Firefox works.
People pick WMV because they think it's free-as-in-beer, since it comes
with their 2003 license (although there are a bunch of recurring charges
they don't find out about until later). In my experience, "savvy"
owners ask a technology expert, and a lot of us are recommending OGG
with Vorbis and Theora, since those formats cannot be taken away from
you, de-supported, or abandoned, and the creator has complete control
over usage, including the *option* to apply use restrictions, if they
want, not because the format owner requires it of them. The majority of
sites that do not use the open streaming media formats do so because
they're run by corporate types who don't care about the media format,
they just want everything on their systems to come from a single vendor
(hence the increasing rate of adoption for Microsoft formats). Most of
the Flash sites, however, are created by small web-design firms, and
those of us in the technology industry have the ability to influence
those firms.
By the way, Flash is NOT an alternative to Quicktime, WMV, or Real.
Flash files are vector images drawn (as by a cartoonist) using a
Macromedia tool. When you see "real" movies in a Flash site, it's the
Flash player calling-out to the Windows Media Player DLL's (Quicktime
libraries on Mac) to play an embedded WMV, MPEG, or AVI file. The open
option for streaming media is OGG, Vorbis, and Theora. The open option
for rich-multimedia websites is SVG. Note also, OGG (which is a
container, not a codec), Vorbis, and Theora are supported in most media
players in Windows, Mac, and Linux, so site creators lose nothing by
using them, and gain quite a bit in terms of the freedom to run their
site according to their own preferences. There are other open codecs
available for streaming media, and many sites actually do use these, but
the only ones, AFAIK, guaranteed to be free of patent are Vorbis and Theora.
==Joseph++
P.S. There aren't any free (beer or speech) tools for Flash work,
Macromedia won't license that, but there are free(beer and speech) tools
for SVG, they just need a bit more work to meet the full set of market
requirements, and in the meantime, the proprietary tools for SVG work
are a LOT cheaper than Macromedia's Flash tools.
Don Calfa wrote:
> What's wrong with a closed format for multimedia? If the company goes
> out of business, someone else will take it's place. At least we have
> a few de-facto players and not a player from each multimedia house.
> Imagine what a mess that would be! A WB player, a Paramount player, a
> Dreamworks player, a Sony Player, a Fox player, Lions Gate player, etc...
>
> People want 'pretty' sites and flash accomplishes that. Deveopers
> like flash because it's write once, and placement is exact on all
> platforms. People with money pay for 'pretty' sites because people
> like pretty sites and that's over 80% of the web population. There is
> no solution available for a devopler to write a pretty multimedia site
> in an open format because none exist. I wish it did. So for now, we're
> stuck for wishing for proprietary players for Linux.
>
> As harsh as this sounds, business owners who want a multimedia site
> really don't care about the 30% global population they're missing.
> They see a computer purchase as an appliance so everybody must have a
> computer just like them because Fry's has 2 aisles of the same type of
> computer, Best Buy has 3 aisles, Circuit City has a corner of the
> store dedicated to 'computer' purchases, Dell has a ton of commercials
> so there must be something there. IE is just a web browser (to them,
> not a doorway for exploits as it is to us) and it plays flash out of
> the box so if they pay for a site to be developed, it really only has
> to work on their system and it work for everyone else. It's up to the
> developer to convince the owner of better formats.
>
> Your next savvy owner who wants streaming media will be aware of
> Quicktime, Real, and WMV. The owner with the Home Theatre system will
> most likely go with quality and choose Quicktime over WMV. Really
> from waht I've seen, the only reason people pick WMV is that the
> server admin is a MS fan and think's it's cool or the owner is
> hoodwinked by the MS propganda. What pray tell is the alternative to
> any of those players? Flash.
>
> There isn't a developer tool that is free (beer or speech) that can
> handle the demand for today's multimedia needs.
>
>
> Joseph Sinclair wrote:
>
>> ARGHHH!
>>
>> Sorry, had to do that ;).
>>
>> Flash is a binary, proprietary, closed (mostly), non-free format with
>> the only player that generally works being non-free software. About
>> half the Linux world cannot (easily) install Flash (including me).
>> There are no guarantees that Flash players will be easily available in
>> the future. Flash is not accessible to persons with disabilities (the
>> open alternative, SVG, is). Flash is susceptible to several very nasty
>> exploits, and there's no effective way to filter those out without
>> removing all Flash (SVG is readable by scanners, so exploits could be
>> filtered without eliminating all content, and the code is viewable, so
>> it's hard to hide what's being done). If you want "pretty" and
>> interactive sites, you'll have to deal with Flash for now, but let the
>> site owners know that you would much prefer SVG content, and cheer on
>> the Mozilla developers working to bring SVG to Firefox 1.1.
>>
>> I agree that Quicktime, Real, and WMV formats are problems. But the
>> better solution is to demand open formats (like OGG containers and
>> Vorbis sound with Theora video), not ask for a different proprietary
>> format.
>>
>> The flash file extension is .SWF for "ShockWave Flash", Flash was
>> originally a faster, lighter, simpler ShockWave format that ended up
>> replacing it's "parent" (as Don states below).
>>
>> There are several other options for multimedia on Linux besides MPlayer,
>> they just don't handle proprietary formats. Again, the better solution
>> is to let the website operators know that they are alienating just over
>> 30% of the global population by using these formats, and they should
>> look into open formats as a means to grow their base market. Pointing
>> out that the open formats work better on the new Firefox browser they
>> keep hearing about won't hurt either.
>>
>> Just my little rant about multimedia on the net.
>>
>> ==Joseph++
>>
>> Don Calfa wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Flash is authored with Macromedia Flash
>>> Shockwave is authored with Macromedia Director.
>>> Director and Authorware is authored with Macromedia Director and
>>> Authorware.
>>>
>>> Director hasn't had a new player in about 4-5 years.
>>> Most of what makes Shockwave different from Flash has been
>>> incorporated into the more recent Flash releases since the flash
>>> player is so light weight.
>>> Flash 7 is more like Shockwave than Flash 5.
>>>
>>> The older shockwave files aren't backwards compatible with the newer
>>> flash players unless the original content provider does an upgrade
>>> which is highly unlikely
>>>
>>> I wish:
>>>
>>> Apple would release a 'certified' Quicktime player/plugin for Linux
>>> Flash become the de-facto standard for streaming media.
>>>
>>> Although _we_ can get mplayer to work, all it is is really a hack and
>>> it'll never make it mainstream because of licensing.
>>> Flash and Real are the only alternatives for mainstream multimedia for
>>> Linux at the moment and Flash is pretty consistent.
>>>
>>> Glitch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Well just for my two cents when I click on the file using Firefox 1.0
>>>> under win2k it says that it is a shockwave flash Object and wants to
>>>> use a shockwave player to access it... But I don't know if that makes
>>>> it a shockwave file or not.
>>>>
>>>> On 4/19/05, Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu <Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Well, at least I was not the only one who was thinking shockwave
>>>>> when I saw
>>>>> .swf Though it makes me wounder more why the did not work on my
>>>>> FC2 box but
>>>>> some flash sites did...
>>>>>
>>>>> Sigh, it is times like this I am glad to say, what do I know I'm
>>>>> just an
>>>>> accountant ;)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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