Proprietary format
Proprietary format entry
What's a proprietary format? You have MP3 (MPEG) audio which is based on open standards and then you have proprietary formats which are generally attempts by software companies to generate their own audio format. The reason for developing proprietary formats is often very simple. Profit. If you come up with the next whiz-bang format which becomes enormously popular, there is every chance of building a business model and revenue stream around it. Think of Liquid Audio, which is based on Dolby Digital and MPEG AAC. It's a proprietary format because it bases some of its technology on MPEG audio standards. It supports streaming audio as well as watermarking and encryption. Liquid Audio is a popular format amongst recording artists and labels because the copyright protection dissuades many from attempting to duplicate and distribute unauthorized copies of Liquid Audio encoded songs. Two other proprietary formats (although they are strictly known as non-propriety as they are not based on the MPEG standard) are Real Audio and Windows Media Audio. One issue facing developers of proprietary formats is getting support from music playing software. The starting point for solving this problem is to develop a player as well. Hence the Liquid Player, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. MPEG-based Proprietary Formats: a2b, MP4, Liquid Audio and Apple Quicktime. Non-MPEG-based Proprietary Formats: Dolby Digital, EPAC, Windows Media Audio, Real Audio, TAC and TwinVQ (VQF).
Why are most part of the video/audio entries encoded with proprietary format? Last time I checked wmv/wma formats were Windows only, excluding the hacks for getting them run on alternative platforms (mainly wma's on Linux). Mpegs in a vcd/svcd compatible format (makes easy cd images) or even Divx if filesize is a concern would satisfy lot more platforms..
The VOD (video-on-demand) format is always a compromise. Here are the reasons why we did choose Windows Media this time:
1. DivX isn't streamable format. This is a huge minus. With WM(A/V) you don't have to download the whole file before watching.
2. MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 require huge bitrates to get even a bit acceptable video quality. 1.15Mbit/s for picture and 225kbit/s for sound is beyond our fileservers disk space and net capacity. MPEG1/2 have been designed to high bitrates and they don't work well in low bitrates.
3. Windows Media Authoring tools and streaming hosts are fully free and easy to use. Realmedia Producer costs bucks we don't have.
4. Windows Media is faster to pack to video stream. Last year, when we did divx clips, we had to capture the video from DV-tape to the HD to MPEG2 first and then encode it to divx offline. This year everything was done realtime. In theory the video clip was ready at the moment we hit stop button when capturing live video.
5. Realmedia is a proprietary format too in exception that it supports more platforms. How many per cent of the audience actually don't have Windows workstation? 5%?
We ended up to Windows Media, because of it's el cheapo price compared to its best rival Realvideo. Apologies to all those who have still avoided the world domination of Microsoft. |
