Ogg-xasperated

I've begun to take the plunge into HTML5 for the sake of video. On Hillvue.tv, we've been using flash for several years for video playback, but the benefits of HTML5 are worth a little extra effort, so I've been doing more research.

I'm particularly interested in achieving playback of the videos on iphones and allowing for people to jump ahead without having to buffer the 30 minute video to watch something near the end. It should also be more future-proof as browsers and devices improve. Ultimately it's a more efficient system than flash for displaying video.

The Video for Everybody code at http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody looked like a good way to implement it. If you have a compatible browser, it'll start with the mp4 version for the sake of Safari and maybe Chrome, then fallback to the ogg version for Opera and Firefox users (and some Chrome), then to flash for anyone unfortunate enough to be using internet explorer. It requires two encodes -- one in mp4 (which I already do each week) and one in ogg theora.

I've learned a lot about the Ogg theora format. In the HTML5 debate, it has a lot going for it, including the 30ish percent market share of Firefox and its forever royalty free status. As an encoder, I'm told that it can look as good or better than H.264 at very small filesizes, if you encode it properly. The "Big Buck Bunny" video on the Video for Everybody page had me convinced.

One thing I know for sure is that Macs make it tougher to use ogg as a part of a Final Cut Studio workflow. It appears that I've attacked the problem backwards the whole way. A twitter follower suggested I use handbrake to convert the file, but handbrake can only encode with an MKV extension, not an .ogg. I tried the miro video encoder, and frankly don't remember why it couldn't work for my needs, but I had to give up on it. Then I tried the simple theora encoder, and was really excited about the speedy encode and its output quality, although in its simplicity it failed to encode my audio. Fail.

I finally found the Xiph.org quicktime components that allow you to export out of FCP directly to Ogg. It's predicting a two-hour encode on a 30-minute video, so the jury's still out. I also read in one forum that it caused Compressor to have some broken ogg files, but as they say, you can't make an omelette without breaking some oggs.

If anyone reading this has found a workflow they're happy with, I'd love to hear about it. In fact, that would be downright ogg-citing! I'd be ogg-static! Sorry, I'll stop now.