Codecs
in the interest of promoting open standards and open formats as well as free and open source software, i’m trying to move away from using proprietary or closed audio and video formats such as mp3 and windows media. instead, from now on, all downloadable (i.e. non-streaming) audio and video files provided on davehayes.org will utilize ogg theora for video and ogg vorbis for audio. this can present some playback difficulty for those of you unfortunate enough to be using proprietary operating systems. so, here, i provide some solutions.
linux
nearly all popular desktop linux distributions include support for ogg vorbis and ogg theora playback as part of the default installation.
windows
if you are using windows, you have several options for ogg playback. here are my favorites:
- videolan (aka vlc)
- mplayer
- xiphqt will allow you to play ogg files in quicktime and itunes
- the ogg directshow filters will allow you to play all ogg files with WMP, along with any other player that uses the directshow framework (MPC is preferred)
mac os x
though your choices may not be as broad as linux and windows, all the bases are covered.
- videolan (aka vlc)
- mplayer os x
- xiphqt will allow you to play ogg files in quicktime and itunes