[abcde] ogg

[Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>]

Hello, I just wanted to ramble about Ogg Vorbis a little bit.

There's packages in Debian woody for encoding/decoding already -
apt-get install vorbize ogg123.

They're a little rough, no manpages, etc, but they do work.

vorbize is 4.02 times slower than gogo on my machine, mostly because Monty
knows better than to concentrate on optimizations at this point in the game.

Vorbis beta2 doesn't support joint stereo yet, it may be worthwhile to hold
off making it the default for abcde until this feature exists.

Ogg doesn't use ID3 or ID3v2 - ID3 is too limited, ID3v2 implementations,
are well, a mess. It uses an enumerated null-terminated array-of-
strings-style comment section for limited amounts of metadata
(artist, title, album, etc) and an XML structure for everything else
(lyrics, CD coverart jpgs, etc). I keep meaning to cvs checkout the vorbis
stuff, I've heard rumors the full spec on this is in there.

vorbize sets the comments at the same time it encodes it, removing the
need for a separate tagger. It also means that abcde will need to be able to
provide that CDDB data at encode time.

I'm going to have to break OUTPUTFORMAT compatibility in 1.9.x to add
support for ogg because it currently hardcodes .mp3 in the default.

The plan is to support ogg as the default and have abcde depend on vorbize,
that way abcde can be moved from Debian's contrib section to main (this is
very important to me :) and even better it'll work out of the box without
installing any third party contraband.

You'd be able to switch back and forth with either -o {ogg,mp3} or
OUTPUTTYPE=mp3 (none of this is set in stone yet).
-- 
Robert Woodcock - rcw@debian.org
"SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Debian has been found particularly addicting
among experienced Linux administrators. Caution should be used when
installing Debian, to avoid excessive amounts of ecstasy and glee. Debian
should not be used if you are evil, have problems with users, or are
currently on any other medication."

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