Showing posts with label Open source. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open source. Show all posts

Wednesday, 18 January 2017

WebM Video Format

After using Screencastify, screencasting software working a plugin to the Chrome browser, the resultant video output was in WebM format. I tried uploading to my astrology blog on Blogger using the video upload tool but the rendered video was of poor quality and wouldn't display properly in fullscreen. However, YouTube did an excellent job of rendering the video and providing the embed code that I'm using here:


I was prompted to investigate this format further and to that end, this video on the WebM website was helpful.


As Wikipedia explains:
WebM is a video file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video tag. It has a sister project WebP for images. The development of the format is sponsored by Google, and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license. 
The BSD license is described by Wikipedia thus:
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the redistribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have reciprocity share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. 
The associated WebP format for images is described on this site as follows:
WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster. 
WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index. 
Lossless WebP supports transparency (also known as alpha channel) at a cost of just 22% additional bytes. For cases when lossy RGB compression is acceptable, lossy WebP also supports transparency, typically providing 3× smaller file sizes compared to PNG. 

Saturday, 25 April 2009

Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope


I've taken the plunge again and begun installing Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope. I'd never heard of a Jackalope but apparently it's a portmanteau of jackrabbit and antelope, an imaginary creature that nonetheless makes regular appearances in popular culture (see Wikipedia article). Even though it's just been released, the OS is getting favourable reviews so it will be interesting to test it out.

Recently I have been experiencing some strange problems with video downloads from YouTube. The downloads would play in Ubuntu but not in Windows. This occurred using both DownloadHelper and FlashGot plugins for the latest release of 3.0.9 release of Firefox. Needless to say this is frustrating given that I often download videos on my Ubuntu PC and then play them at school on Windows-based machines. I haven't done any research into the problem but I'll see if it recurs with the new release.