Friday, August 08, 2003
And now for a rant about Codecs.
Here is the process:
I am some random guy who gets his hands on the source for DivX or some other video/sound compression software. I decide that I can use my programming powers to improve on the code, and thus I make my own compression/decompression software which is used by DivX to encode and then decode movies (for example).
I send it to a bunch of people, and despite the fact that it MAY have some better features than some more official or integrated stuff, its in an Alpha stage which means it incredible untested and unstable, for some reason people decide to USE it to encode stuff.
This prompts anyone who wants to view anything they encoded to have to hunt down and find every different codec. Ofcourse, all these codecs are made by random people, so half of them are impossible to find, and the other half DONT WORK. They aren't supported and almost always fuck up whatever software you had in the first place.
So WHY DO PEOPLE USE THEM? Well, it might save them that extra 10 megs on a 700 meg file! It might let them juice out that extra 10khz on the sound quality!
In my opinion, it is a BRAIN DISFUNCTION very similar to the one that those people who maintain that Linux is better than Windows are afflicted by. It is better, but not at everything. People like me prefer to trade UNIVERSAL FUNCTIONALITY over principals or a boost in a little, insignifigant feature.
Here is the process:
I am some random guy who gets his hands on the source for DivX or some other video/sound compression software. I decide that I can use my programming powers to improve on the code, and thus I make my own compression/decompression software which is used by DivX to encode and then decode movies (for example).
I send it to a bunch of people, and despite the fact that it MAY have some better features than some more official or integrated stuff, its in an Alpha stage which means it incredible untested and unstable, for some reason people decide to USE it to encode stuff.
This prompts anyone who wants to view anything they encoded to have to hunt down and find every different codec. Ofcourse, all these codecs are made by random people, so half of them are impossible to find, and the other half DONT WORK. They aren't supported and almost always fuck up whatever software you had in the first place.
So WHY DO PEOPLE USE THEM? Well, it might save them that extra 10 megs on a 700 meg file! It might let them juice out that extra 10khz on the sound quality!
In my opinion, it is a BRAIN DISFUNCTION very similar to the one that those people who maintain that Linux is better than Windows are afflicted by. It is better, but not at everything. People like me prefer to trade UNIVERSAL FUNCTIONALITY over principals or a boost in a little, insignifigant feature.
