Opus is a definite possibility for audio output; it's very good quality and
can use less bandwidth than Vorbis. However I'm waiting for the browser
support story outside of Firefox/Chrome to settle down a bit more:
* Edge supports Opus in WebM container but only in MSE mode
* Safari beta supports Opus in WebRTC streams but not in <audio> or <video>
* Chrome and Firefox are experimenting with Opus in ISO BMFF (MP4) streams
as well, which might be more amenable for MS/Apple to support...
There's also the possibility of MP3 output for audio, now that patents have
expired. This has even greater browser support, and would allow us to skip
loading of the ogv.js shim for audio on Safari/IE/Edge.
-- brion
On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 1:43 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Out of curiosity, is there any plan to move audio to
opus at some point?
(As someone not super well versed) it looks like a superior codec by every
measure, and browser support appears similar.
--
brian
On Thursday, August 3, 2017, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Due to ongoing issues with ffmpeg2theora &
upcoming server upgrades, I'm
planning to accelerate our migration from Ogg
Theora video output to WebM
VP8:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T172445
== When will it change? ==
Sometime in August 2017 as schedules permit, unless surprises pop up in
final
testing.
== What will change? ==
Folks using Chrome and Firefox may not notice any difference -- these
browsers
have used native WebM playback by default for some time. "Ogg"
will disappear from the list of optionally-playable and downloadable
formats.
In Safari, IE, or Edge where the 'ogv.js'
compatibility shim is used,
you will see videos automatically show up in WebM mode
instead of Ogg mode.
There is a tradeoff: higher quality & lower
bandwidth use, but higher
CPU usage. On very slow computers or at very high
resolutions, you may hit
CPU limits at one resolution step lower than with Ogg.
== Why are we making this change? ==
* Eventually we need to go to WebM to support adaptive streaming, so
this was
always planned for the long term...
* For best quality we use an unreleased version
of libogg and
ffmpeg2theora, but there are still some bugs in there and we
routinely get
reports of odd hangs or crashes.
* Ops is updating the servers, and continuing to
maintain the custom
packages that are still crashy is getting to be problematic.
* Dropping the Ogg format for video will free up
disk space and and CPU
time, and should result in faster turnaround for derived
file generation.
== What about Ogg audio? ==
Ogg is still being used for audio, and will not be affected.
-- brion
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