
In a recent interview, Wikimedia deputy director
Erik Moller talks about the site's upcoming suite of editing tools and sharing options. "Although videos have been part of the Wikimedia stable for a couple years through the open-source Ogg Theora format, the offering has been limited. Now, however, a Firefox 3.5 plugin called Firefogg will allow for server-side transcoding to the Ogg format. In addition to allowing for downloading and editing, the Ogg format also consumes significantly fewer resources during video playback. The linked article also indicates that there are other video sites (apart from Wikimedia and Dailymotion) that are moving to the open standards format for video, noting that
"hundreds of thousands of public domain videos from sources such as the Internet Archive and Metavid will be available in the new format".
Member since:
2005-06-30
This is debatable. Keep in mind that H.264 is quite complex. It might take years before encoders are exploiting it to its full potential. In addition, the industry is known for moving slowly. Last, but not the least: there are many different implementations. While it promotes competition, developers are doomed to reinvent the wheel.
I don't think they are sitting on their laurels; they just cannot keep up with the pace of open-source development. x264 is GPL'd, yet doesn't benefit from funded developers. Money is always a great way to focus development!