OggConvert

OggConvert version 0.3.3 “Where did you go…” has been released.

This is the latest version of OggConvert, a simple GTK utility to convert media files to the patent-free Vorbis, Theora, Dirac and now VP8 formats.

What’s new in this version:

• Support for the newly-opened VP8 codec (requires gst-plugins-bad 0.10.18 or newer)
• Support for the WebM container
• Fixes Dirac encoder no longer being detected since it moved packages
• Change the way quality is calcuated for Dirac encoding, hopefully leading to better-looking files
• New translations: Arabic, Danish, Greek, Japanese, Latvian and Romanian, and lots of other translations updated. Many thanks, as always, to the translators.

The source code (executable without installation thanks to Python) can be downloaded from

http://oggconvert.tristanb.net/download/source/

Please file bugs on Launchpad:

http://launchpad.net/oggconvert/+filebug

So, having spent a year or so backpacking around Australia, unexpectedly landing a job and settling in to a new life on the “wrong” side of the world, it’s time OggConvert got some development again.

We’re back, ladies and gentlemen.

Whilst we’ve been away, it’s become clear that Theora is in the middle of a pitched battle against H.264 for the future of web video. If it’s going to win, there need to exist tools to allow people to easily create and deploy Ogg video — and I’d like it if OggConvert could be one of those tools.

As such, I’m planning on adding a few new features to OggConvert over the next few releases, such as fixed-bitrate encoding, which have been on the “requested” pile for a while. There’s also a year’s worth of bug reports to get though — it’s going to be a busy time!

In the short term though, I’m planning on getting an “emergency” release of OggConvert out in the next week or so. This won’t have any new features, but will address issues that have crept up over the period of non-maintenance, most importantly Dirac encoding no longer being offered automatically (the GStreamer encoder changed packages, so OggConvert’s autodetection can’t find it any more).

I also have a bit of a request: if anyone has any short (max 1 minute long) videos featuring multiple audio tracks and/or multiplexed subtitles, they would be invaluable in letting me test various things in OggConvert. Please post links in the comments, or e-mail me at t.c.brindle at gmail dot com.

Thanks, and it’s good to be back!

OggConvert version 0.3.2 “…and some blood on my shirt” has been released.

This is the latest release of OggConvert, a simple Gnome utility to convert media files into the patent-free Theora, Dirac and Vorbis formats.

Dirac encoding requires version 1.0.0 or newer of the Schroedinger encoder for GStreamer.

OggConvert is written in Python using PyGTK and PyGST. It is released under the GNU LGPL.

What’s new in this version:

• (Hopefully) fix time remaining being way off on AMD64. Closes bug #250174.
• Fix (MPEG) files occasionally showing “120% Completed” and other such oddities.
• Dirac is no longer considered “experimental” now that the encoder has reached v1.0. Go ahead and try it out!
• Use “perceptual weighting” in the Dirac encoder by default. This should result in much smaller output files (and slightly quicker encoding) at equivalent quality settings.
• OggConvert’s quality settings now match ffmpeg2theora’s.
• New translations: Catalan, Franco-Provençal, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian Bokmal, Slovak, Serbian, Turkish and Traditional Chinese. Many thanks to all the translators.
• Other minor bug fixes

Known issues in this release:

• None!

Source code (executable without installation thanks to Python) can be downloaded from http://oggconvert.tristanb.net/download/source/.

Please file bugs on Launchpad: http://bugs.launchpad.net/oggconvert/+filebug

New translations welcome! Please go to http://translations.launchpad.net/oggconvert/

According to the browser stats, nearly one third of people who visit this website are using Windows. Up till now, almost every single one of them would have had to leave disappointed. Well not any more: if you’re a Windows user, I’m delighted to tell you that you can now run OggConvert!

Well, okay, so it doesn’t look great, but the point is it works. Installation instructions can be found on the Windows page, but be warned it’s not quite as easy as on Linux at this point.

It’s early days, and you should probably regard this as a beta version at best. It’s only been tested on 32-bit Windows XP — it should also work on Windows 2000, but I have no idea about Vista, and Win64 seems unlikely.

If you fancy trying it out, please do drop back here and leave a comment about whether it worked or not. That way hopefully we can make OggConvert a bit more Windows-friendly in future. And like it says on the other page, if anyone with the know-how wants to put together an installation package to make life easier for Windows users…

So after far too long, I’ve finally gotten around to replacing most of the content that got wiped out when our hosting provider went bust a few months ago. Enjoy!

Apologies to anyone who’s tried to comment on anything on the site in that time — your posts got lost amongst the many thousands of spam messages that accumlated when Akismet wasn’t enabled. This has now been sorted out, so hopefully everything should Just Work — and now with added OpenID for those who use it.

Please bear with us while we get back on our feet…