Petter Reinholdtsen

The Norwegian Unix User Group is recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides directly with the video stream. For this, we use the dvswitch package from the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated source, sink and mixer applications and dvgrab. To allow this setup to work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use avahi to connect the various parts together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for Go Open 2009.

The USB image is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any larger stick as well.

As part of the work we do in NUUG to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this will become easier when the <video> tag is implemented in all browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand. There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5 <video> tag, the <object> tag, the <embed> tag and the <applet> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and finding the best options is a major challenge.

I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from labs.opera.com, to see how it handled a <video> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes. I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next, instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the <video> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start playing when the download is done.

The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is available from the nuug site. Will have to test it with the new Firefox too.

In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)

Jeg ble glad for å se under gårdagens medlemsmøte i NUUG Oslo at utsending av live-video fra møtet fungerte for første gang. Forrige gang ble det ved en teknisk tabbe sendt video uten lyd. Vi kan takke Ole Kristian Lien og resten av videogruppen i NUUG for at nå NUUG-medlemmer over det ganske land kunne se foredraget samtidig med oss i Oslo. Vi opplevde til og med under møtet å motta spørsmål via IRC som ble besvart der og da. Opptaket publiseres så snart det er kopiert over til NUUGs webserver og komprimert.

Etter mange års meditasjon over temaet, har NUUG endelig klart å bestemme seg for hvilken lisens vi skal bruke på videoopptakene som gjøres av NUUGs videogruppe. Ole Kristian har annonsert at lisensen blir Creative Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge. Jeg er veldig glad for at denne saken endelig er landet. Lisensen for opptaket til Stallman-foredraget ble en annen pga. at lisensvalget ikke var avklart på forhånd og IFI og PING ønsket CC-BY-ND, og må ses på som et unntak i denne sammenhengen.

I går lanserte NUUGs videogruppe Frikanalen med åpne standarder, og resultatet av noen intense uker med arbeide kunne endelig presenteres. Jeg har tro på åpen kanalkonseptet som Frikanalen er et eksempel på, der borgerne får anledning til å kringkaste sitt syn på en åpen og demokratisk måte. Jeg er veldig glad vi har fått gjort kanalen tilgjengelig i Ogg Theora, slik at alle kan få tilgang til opptakene på web, og slipper å måtte installere MS Silverlight for å spille av opptakene.

Frikanalen har en brokete historie, og dagens inkarnasjon er ikke helt slik foreningen Åpen kanal planla det for mange år siden, noe som er bakgrunnen for at det fredag 13. mars 2009 kl 09:00 starter en rettsak i Oslo tingrett der Kringkasterforeningen (tidligere foreningen Åpen kanal) har saksøkt kulturdepartementet over konsesjonsvilkårene til Frikanalen. Jeg er spent på resultatet.

I arbeidet med Frikanalen med åpne standarder, så har vi hatt glede av å se en rekke av innslagene som er tilgjengelig. Her er mye religiøst sludder, fra vandring i jerusalem via religiøst vinklede nyheter til kreasjonisk retorikk, men også fine dokumentarer om redningsselskapet og interessante tegneserieanmeldelser. Det jeg derimot har hatt størst glede av, er jul i studentrådet, der hver episode var en fest å se på. Jeg håper NUUG lykkes med å få ut sine opptak med like stor suksess.

One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:

URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
  --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
  --intf=dummy

The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make sure no X interface is needed.

The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script vlc-record to use from at or cron:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
URL="$1"
SAVEFILE="$2"
DURATION="$3"
DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
  --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
  --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
pid=$!
sleep $DURATION
kill $pid
wait $pid

I Microsoft sin høringsuttalelse til forslag til versjon 2 av statens referansekatalog over standarder, lirer de av seg følgende FUD-perle:

"Vorbis, OGG, Theora og FLAC er alle tekniske spesifikasjoner overordnet styrt av xiph.org, som er en ikke-kommersiell organisasjon. Etablerte og anerkjente standardiseringsorganisasjoner, som Oasis, W3C og Ecma, har en godt innarbeidet vedlikeholds- og forvaltningsprosess av en standard. Det er derimot helt opp til hver enkelt organisasjon å bestemme hvordan tekniske spesifikasjoner videreutvikles og endres, og disse spesifikasjonene bør derfor ikke defineres som åpne standarder."

De vokter seg vel for å nevne den anerkjente standardiseringsorganisasjonen IETF, som er organisasjonen bak HTTP, IP og det meste av protokoller på Internet, og RFC-standardene som IETF står bak. Ogg er spesifisert i RFC 3533, og er uten tvil å anse som en åpen standard. Vorbis er RFC 5215. Theora er under standardisering via IETF, med siste utkast publisert 2006-07-21 (riktignok er dermed teksten ikke skrevet i stein ennå, men det blir neppe endringer som ikke er bakoverkompatibel). De kan være inne på noe når det gjelder FLAC da jeg ikke finner tegn til at spesifikasjonen tilgjengelig på web er på tur via noen standardiseringsorganisasjon, men i og med at folkene bak Ogg, Theora og Vorbis også har involvert seg i Flac siden 2003, så ser jeg ikke bort fra at også den organiseres via IETF. Jeg kjenner personlig lite til FLAC.

Uredelig argumentasjon bør en holde seg for god til å komme med, spesielt når det er så enkelt i dagens Internet-hverdag å gå misvisende påstander etter i sømmene.

Jeg ble glad da regjeringen annonserte versjon 2 av statens referansekatalog over standarder, men trist da jeg leste hva som faktisk var vedtatt etter høringen. De fleste av de valgte åpne standardene er gode og vil bidra til at alle kan delta på like vilkår i å lage løsninger for staten, men noen av dem blokkerer for de som ikke har anledning til å benytte spesifikasjoner som krever betaling for bruk (såkalt royalty-betaling). Det gjelder spesifikt for H.264 for video og MP3 for lyd. Så lenge bruk av disse var valgfritt mens Ogg Theora og Ogg Vorbis var påkrevd, kunne alle som ønsket å spille av video og lyd fra statens websider gjøre dette uten å måtte bruke programmer der betaling for bruk var nødvendig. Når det nå er gjort valgfritt for de statlige etatene å bruke enten H.264 eller Theora (og MP3 eler Vorbis), så vil en bli tvunget til å forholde seg til royalty-belastede standarder for å få tilgang til videoen og lyden.

Det gjør meg veldig trist at regjeringen har forlatt prinsippet om at alle standarder som ble valgt til å være påkrevd i katalogen skulle være uten royalty-betaling. Jeg håper det ikke betyr at en har mistet all forståelse for hvilke prinsipper som må følges for å oppnå likeverdig konkurranse mellom aktørene i IT-bransjen. NUUG advarte mot dette i sin høringsuttalelse, men ser ut til å ha blitt ignorert.

For å forstå mer om hvorfor standardkatalogens versjon 2 ble som den ble, har jeg bedt om kopi fra FAD av dokumentene som ble lagt frem for regjeringen da de tok sin avgjørelse. De er nå lagt ut på NUUGs wiki, direkte tilgjengelig via "Referansekatalogen v2.0 - Oppsummering av høring" og "Referansekatalog for IT-standarder i offentlig sektor Versjon 2.0, dd.mm.åååå - UTKAST".

Det er tre ting jeg merker meg i oppsummeringen fra høringsuttalelsen da jeg skummet igjennom den. Det første er at forståelsen av hvordan programvarepatenter påvirker fri programvareutvikling også i Norge når en argumenterer med at royalty-betaling ikke er et relevant problem i Norge. Det andre er at FAD ikke har en prinsipiell forståelse av verdien av en enkelt standard innenfor hvert område. Det siste er at påstander i høringsuttalelsene ikke blir etterprøvd (f.eks. påstanden fra Microsoft om hvordan Ogg blir standardisert og påstanden fra politidirektoratet om patentproblemer i Theora).

Endelig har NUUG klart å få kringkastet ut et av sine fordrag på TV. Foredraget om utskriftsløsningen Biforst var først ute, pga. at det var det nyeste foredraget som var holdt på norsk, og dermed slapp vi å finne ut av hvordan teksting av video skulle gjøres.

NUUG har vært involvert i Frikanalen en stund nå, for å forsøke å få ut budskapet vårt også på TV, og dette første foredraget er en sped start på det vi har planlagt.

NUUGs første foredrag sendes ut via frikanelen på digitalt bakkenett, og alle abonnenter av riks-TV skal dermed ha mulighet til å ta inn sendingen. Slå på TVen 5/12 16:05 (for sent), 12/12 14:00, 19/12 16:00, 24/12 15:37 eller 26/12 16:11 i år, så skal du få se meg, Tollef og alle andre de som deltok på møtet på TV.

In the Debian popularity-contest numbers, the adobe-flashplugin package the second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package installed.

In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008 («Skolelinux i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs»), one of the most important problems schools experienced with Debian Edu/Skolelinux was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a good reason to stay with Windows.

I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web pages they want to visit.

This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7. The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus accept the new package into Squeeze.

A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital camera, a Canon IXUS 130. It was instructive and very disturbing to be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera. Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences without asking for permissions that is at risk.

On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is written:

This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.

No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4 standard.

In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.

This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to read "Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and "H.264 Is Not The Sort Of Free That Matters" by Simon Phipps to learn more about the issue. The solution is to support the free and open standards for video, like Ogg Theora, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.

Frikanalen og NUUG jobber for å få TED talks kringkastet på Frikanalen, for å gi et mer variert innhold på kanalen som i dag sendes på RiksTV, Lyse og Uninett. Før innslagene kan sendes må det lages norske undertekster, og dette her trengs det frivillige. Det er hundrevis av innslag, men mine favoritter er James Randi og Michael Specter. Hvis du har litt tid til overs, bli med på å oversette TED-foredragene til norsk og få på plass undertekster. TED har allerede opplegg på plass for å håndtere oversettelser og undertekster. Registrer deg på sidene til TED i dag!

NUUG holder også på å få alle opptakene fra NUUG-presentasjonene publisert på Frikanalen. Foredrag på engelsk må også her tekstes og oversettes. Ta kontakt med video@nuug.no hvis du vil bidra med teksting og oversetting. Arbeidet koordineres på epostlisten og på IRC (#nuug-video på irc.oftc.org), og en wikiside brukes som notatblokk for arbeidet. Mest lovende verktøy for dette ser i dag ut til å være Universal Subtitles, som lar en bidra med teksting via en nettleser.

The Gnash project is the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with AVM2 flash files.

To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started a pledge with the following text:

"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but only if 10 other people will do the same."

- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer

Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010

The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these days. The project web page is available from http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.

The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try to get this to happen.

The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation, http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32 .

I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than 10 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds. :)

I dag la jeg inn en kommentar på en sak hos NRKBeta om hvordan TV-serien Blindpassasjer ble laget i forbindelse med at filmene NRK la ut ikke var tilgjengelig i et fritt og åpent format. Dette var det jeg skrev publiserte der 07:39.

"Vi fikk en kommentar rundt måten streamet innhold er beskyttet fra nedlasting. Mange av oss som kan mer enn gjennomsnittet om systemer som dette, vet at det stort sett er mulig å lure ut ting med den nødvendige forkunnskapen."

Haha. Å streame innhold er det samme som å laste ned innhold, så å beskytte en stream mot nedlasting er ikke mulig. Å skrive noe slikt er å forlede leseren.

Med den bakgrunn blir forklaringen om at noen rettighetshavere kun vil tillate streaming men ikke nedlasting meningsløs.

Anbefaler forresten å lese http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/10/drm-is-toxic-to-culture/index.htm om hva som ville være konsekvensen hvis digitale avspillingssperrer (DRM) fungerte. Det gjør de naturligvis ikke teknisk - det er jo derfor de må ha totalitære juridiske beskyttelsesmekanismer på plass, men det er skremmende hva samfunnet tillater og NRK er med på å bygge opp under.

Ca. 20 minutter senere får jeg følgende epost fra Anders Hofseth i NRKBeta:

From: Anders Hofseth <XXX@gmail.com>
To: "pere@hungry.com" <pere@hungry.com>
Cc: Eirik Solheim <XXX@gmail.com>, Jon Ståle Carlsen <XXX@gmail.com>, Henrik Lied <XXX@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NRKbeta] Kommentar: "Bakom Blindpassasjer: del 1"
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 07:58:44 +0200

Hei Petter.
Det du forsøker dra igang er egentlig en interessant diskusjon, men om vi skal kjøre den i kommentarfeltet her, vil vi kunne bli bedt om å fjerne blindpassasjer fra nett- tv og det vil heller ikke bli særlig lett å klarere ut noe annet arkivmateriale på lang tid.

Dette er en situasjon NRKbeta ikke ønsker, så kommentaren er fjernet og den delen av diskusjonen er avsluttet på nrkbeta, vi antar konsekvensene vi beskriver ikke er noe du ønsker heller...

Med hilsen,
-anders

Ring meg om noe er uklart: 95XXXXXXX

Ble så fascinert over denne holdningen, at jeg forfattet og sendte over følgende svar. I og med at debatten er fjernet fra NRK Betas kommentarfelt, så velger jeg å publisere her på bloggen min i stedet. Har fjernet epostadresser og telefonnummer til de involverte, for å unngå at de tiltrekker seg uønskede direkte kontaktforsøk.

From: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
To: Anders Hofseth <XXX@gmail.com>
Cc: Eirik Solheim <XXX@gmail.com>,
Jon Ståle Carlsen <XXX@gmail.com>,
Henrik Lied <XXX@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NRKbeta] Kommentar: "Bakom Blindpassasjer: del 1"
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:24:34 +0200

[Anders Hofseth]
> Hei Petter.

Hei.

> Det du forsøker dra igang er egentlig en interessant diskusjon, men
> om vi skal kjøre den i kommentarfeltet her, vil vi kunne bli bedt om
> å fjerne blindpassasjer fra nett- tv og det vil heller ikke bli
> særlig lett å klarere ut noe annet arkivmateriale på lang tid.

Godt å se at du er enig i at dette er en interessant diskusjon. Den vil nok fortsette en stund til. :)

Må innrømme at jeg synes det er merkelig å lese at dere i NRK med vitende og vilje ønsker å forlede rettighetshaverne for å kunne fortsette å legge ut arkivmateriale.

Kommentarer og diskusjoner i bloggene til NRK Beta påvirker jo ikke faktum, som er at streaming er det samme som nedlasting, og at innhold som er lagt ut på nett kan lagres lokalt for avspilling når en ønsker det.

Det du sier er jo at klarering av arkivmateriale for publisering på web krever at en holder faktum skjult fra debattfeltet på NRKBeta. Det er ikke et argument som holder vann. :)

> Dette er en situasjon NRKbeta ikke ønsker, så kommentaren er fjernet
> og den delen av diskusjonen er avsluttet på nrkbeta, vi antar
> konsekvensene vi beskriver ikke er noe du ønsker heller...

Personlig ønsker jeg at NRK skal slutte å stikke hodet i sanden og heller være åpne på hvordan virkeligheten fungerer, samt ta opp kampen mot de som vil låse kulturen inne. Jeg synes det er en skam at NRK godtar å forlede publikum. Ville heller at NRK krever at innhold som skal sendes skal være uten bruksbegresninger og kan publiseres i formater som heller ikke har bruksbegresninger (bruksbegresningene til H.264 burde få varselbjellene i NRK til å ringe).

At NRK er med på DRM-tåkeleggingen og at det kommer feilaktive påstander om at "streaming beskytter mot nedlasting" som bare er egnet til å bygge opp om en myte som er skadelig for samfunnet som helhet.

Anbefaler <URL:http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/> og en titt på <URL: http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html >. for å se hva slags bruksbegresninger H.264 innebærer.

Hvis dette innebærer at NRK må være åpne med at arkivmaterialet ikke kan brukes før rettighetshaverene også innser at de er med på å skade samfunnets kultur og kollektive hukommelse, så får en i hvert fall synliggjort konsekvensene og antagelig mer flammer på en debatt som er langt på overtid.

> Ring meg om noe er uklart: XXX

Intet uklart, men ikke imponert over måten dere håndterer debatten på. Hadde du i stedet kommet med et tilsvar i kommentarfeltet der en gjorde det klart at blindpassasjer-blogpostingen ikke var riktig sted for videre diskusjon hadde dere i mine øyne kommet fra det med ryggraden på plass.

PS: Interessant å se at NRK-ansatte ikke bruker NRK-epostadresser.

Som en liten avslutning, her er noen litt morsomme innslag om temaet. <URL: http://www.archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheft > og <URL: http://patentabsurdity.com/ > hadde vært noe å kringkaste på NRK1. :)

Vennlig hilsen,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen

In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC. Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.

But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use mplayer in Debian Edu/Skolelinux. The reason is simple. We need a good browser plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I last tested the browser plugins available in Debian, the VLC plugin failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.

While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window. For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at what is going on.

The Digistan definition of a free and open standard reads like this:

The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard as follows:

1. A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
2. The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.
3. The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.
4. The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
5. There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of products based on the standard.

For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list in July 2009, for those that want to see some background information. According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.

Free from vendor capture?

As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the Xiph foundation is such vendor, but given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the specification. But it seem unlikely.

Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?

Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any documentation indicating this.

According to a report prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory. Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the report is correct.

Specification freely available?

The specification for the Ogg container format and both the Vorbis and Theora codeces are available on the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:

Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora] specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify specification compliance.

The Ogg container format is specified in IETF RFC 3533, and this is the term:

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a requirement for the Digistan definition.

Royalty-free?

There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg Theora format. MPEG-LA and Steve Jobs in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec than any real problem with Ogg Theora.

No constraints on re-use?

I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.

Conclusion

3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify this.

It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to see if they are free and open standards.

Today I discovered via digi.no that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement, yesterday announced plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely open" codec technology. If you believe H.264 was free for everyone to use, I recommend having a look at the essay "H.264 – Not The Kind Of Free That Matters". It is not free of cost for creators of video tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information on the Google announcement is available from OSnews. A good read. :)

Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some browsers support H.264, and others support Ogg Theora and WebM (Dirac is not really an option yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for H.264 to not reach all potential viewers. Wikipedia keep an updated summary of the current browser support.

Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep promoting H.264, and John Gruber presents the mind set of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions presenting the issues with H.264. Both are worth a read.

Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free, they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This argument was covered by Simon Phipps in todays blog post, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the browser while still allowing plugins.

I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest, is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.

An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only present the argument if the change make sense from a business perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google. Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome. I guess time will tell.

Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided more background and information on the move it a blog post yesterday.

The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM. Most video sites seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough, the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to the Wikipedia article on HTML5 video, this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari. The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla Firefox. H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and Safari can install plugins to get it.

To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In NUUG, we provide first fallback to a plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an example from last week.

The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H.264 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H.264 was without royalties and license terms, check out "H.264 – Not The Kind Of Free That Matters" by Simon Phipps.

A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is available from the Xiph.org wiki, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a similar list for WebM nor H.264.

Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.

The Gnash project is still the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. A few days ago the project announced that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support into Gnash.

For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is perfectly legal here in Norway.

Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:

#!/bin/sh
# apt-get install lsdvd
title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M

But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.

Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it back as an ISO.

#!/bin/sh
# apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
set -e
tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
rm -rf $tmpdir/$title

Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?

Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to read optical media, and is called like this: readom dev=/dev/dvd f=image.iso. It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.

Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about his program python-dvdvideo, which seem to be just what I am looking for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.

Ofte har jeg lyst til å laste ned et innslag fra NRKs nettsted for å se det senere når jeg ikke er på nett, eller for å ha det tilgjengelig når jeg en gang i fremtiden ønsker å referere til innslaget selv om NRK har fjernet det fra sine nettsider. I dag fant jeg et lite script som fikser jobben.

Scriptet er laget av Jan Henning Thorsen og tilgjengelig fra github, og gjør det veldig enkelt å laste ned. Kjør nrk-downloader.sh http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/582810 for å hente ned et enkelt innslag eller nrk-downloader.sh http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/kategori/3521 for å laste ned alle episodene i en serie.

Det er ikke rakettforskning å laste ned NRK-"strømmer", og tidligere gjorde jeg dette manuelt med mplayer. Scriptet til Hr. Thorsen gjør det raskere og enklere for meg, men jeg vil ikke si at det er en revolusjonerende løsning. Jeg mener jo fortsatt at påstanden fra NRKs ansatte om at det er vesensforskjellig å legge tilgjengelig for nedlasting og for streaming er meningsløs.

Many years ago, the Skolelinux / Debian Edu project initiated a student project to create a tool for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion", was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last year...

Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new name, linuxstopmotion. The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I mean). I've been following the mailing list and the improvement already in place and planned for the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies. Check it out. :)

Here in Norway, the Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs is behind a directory of standards that are recommended or mandatory for use by the government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete on the same level.

But recently, some standards with RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) terms have made their way into the directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By definition, users of free software do not need to register their use. So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects. And given that people will use the software without handing any money to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result in these situations is that free software are locked out from implementing standards with RAND terms.

Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free software developers are working in a global market, it does not really help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here. I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more attention to these issues in the future.

You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms from Simon Phipps (RAND: Not So Reasonable?).

Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a blog post from Glyn Moody over at Computer World UK warning about the same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for the hearing taking place at the moment (respond before 2012-04-27). It proposes to require video conferencing standards including specifications with RAND terms.