Format of Choice for a Legal, Free, Audio-eBook? 38
audioAuthor asks: "Let's say I have a recorded audio-book (no music, just speech), which I want to share with the world. What format should I use to distribute it? Main requirements would be: 'Everyone is allowed to redistribute it without any restrictions" and "Usable as widely as possible'. I have been thinking of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Speex. MP3 would be really nice, as it's usable almost everywhere, even without a computer, but it has licensing problems which I don't quite understand. Speex is free and designed for speech, but it's not widely supported at the moment. I think that Ogg Vorbis is currently better supported than Speex, and also free, but not designed for speech and would take more space to achieve same quality. So what do you say? Which one of these should I choose, or are there other formats to consider?"
Why not all three? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not all three? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LAME and MP3 (Score:1)
Re:LAME and MP3 (Score:2, Informative)
(A) The (L)GPL patent clause doesn't make any distinction between commercial use or not.
(B) LAME is not Free Software in any country that respects MP3 patents -- it's actually illegal to distribute according to the LGPL licence in places like the US and Germany.
(C) If someone does illegally distribute LAME to you, Fraunhofer will still want their damn money.
All of them (Score:2)
If bandwidth is limited, then Speex gives you the best size:quality ratio for voice. Otherwise, offer MP3, Vorbis, Speex, and whatever else you feel like. If you don't have to choose, why limit yourself?
If bandwidth is limited (Score:3, Insightful)
Bandwidth limitation really isn't an excuse, nowadays.
Re:If bandwidth is limited (Score:2)
Is too (Score:2)
Not for streaming over the Internet, maybe. But if you're storing files on a limited medium, it's still an issue. Well, not a big issue....
I own an MP3 player with 256MB that I mostly use to listen to spoken word stuff. At 16 kbps, which seems to be the minimum rate for that kind of content, I can store at most 25 hours. Yeah, that's a lot, but suppose I feel a sudden urge to drive accross country? I'd basically have to get another player with more
Re:Is too (Score:3, Funny)
Do you get these urges often?
Re:Is too (Score:2)
A better MP3 player than yours is, what, $50? If you get the urge to drive across the country, just stop at Best Buy first.
Re:Is too (Score:1)
Re:Is too (Score:1)
It did seem like a lot...
Re:Is too (Score:1)
I would have given away my car by now ;) (Score:1)
My Ford Escort wagon sometimes topped 40mpg; that, plus the fixed costs (for a current car owner at least) like insurance, licensure, etc, and the flexibility of setting one's own pace and stopping points, are why I liked to travel ludicrous distances by car. However, the Escort wasn't so hot at topping things like, say, mo
Re:Is too (Score:2)
Re:All of them (Score:3, Insightful)
MP3 is ubiquitous and great for almost any portable player. The only reason not to use it is because you like some other format and want to forcibly promote it. (Which assumes that your audience knows your work well enough to consider installing new software in order to hear you... which may or may not be true.) At least when using LAME, you can fine tune the compressing for the speaker to reduce file size pretty considerably.
Ogg vorbis is great for both philosophical
What is your *real* goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to make a political/philosophical statement use Ogg Vorbis.
If you want no-one to ever bother listening to it use Speex.
If you want many people to listen to it use MP3.
Correction (Score:2)
flac (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:flac (Score:2)
Re:flac (Score:2)
Licensing? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Licensing? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not too sure, but... (Score:1)
And I agree that Speex is useless (who's gonna listen to it? I'd never heard of it before now), and Ogg isn't very common outside of Linux from my experience...
Re:I'm not too sure, but... (Score:1)
However does your support it? Probably not.
So to get back to the original poster, speex would be great, but not a lot of people would be able to use it.
MP3 would be best for everybody to listen too, but ogg would still be best bw/quality wise.
You could as mentioned before offer 2/3 (speex and mp3) and also put a download of the speex codec for .
Re:I'm not too sure, but... (Score:2)
Yes, LAME does a surprisingly good job on speech at low bit-rates, provided you use one of the --preset xxxxx options. In my own tests, I found it was only a little worse than speech-optimised codecs like those from Microsoft and Real.
Don't use LAME just with a low bit-rate though - it will sound dreadful. Use --preset whatever.
Re:I'm not too sure, but... (Score:3, Informative)
AMR? (Score:2)
What about AMR? It seems to be designed for speech and widely supported by mobile devices. Though I'm not sure about the licensing issues.
On a side note, does anyone know of an easy way to convert AMR to MP3/OGG/WAV, preferable on Linux? Yes, I've tried Google results like this [aquarionics.com], but couldn't make it to work.
Re:AMR? (Score:1)
ffmpeg -i infile.amr outfile.wav
or, if you want to get a video from your phone:
ffmpeg -i infile.3gp -ar 16000 video.avi
ffmpeg is quite flexible, and does a damn good job of "what you want it to do" when you run the minimal options.
FLAC (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FLAC (Score:1)
Re:FLAC (Score:2)
Multiple formats (Score:2)
For pure speech, -q0 Vorbis is more than good enough and it will also be around 50 kbps.
For those who can't use AAC or Vorbis, create a low quality MP3.
Re:Multiple formats (Score:1)
Also note that there is a -q-1 Vorbis (i.e. you can say oggenc -q-1 ....
That's smaller still, and IMHO good enough even for music.
podiobooks.com (Score:2)
You might try heading over to http://www.podiobooks.com [podiobooks.com] and send the guys there a query about this.
They are using mp3 as the format.
All 3 why not... (Score:3, Informative)