I started tinkering around with HTML5 recently and am very interested in Audio tag. Though one thing immediately came to my attention, it appears that OGG is the only format supported in Firefox!
I understand that this is because MP3 and other codecs are proprietary software and require a license to use. But how is HTML5 Audio (and Video) going to catch on if you can only use OGG?? Like it or not the world is currently hooked to MP3 or Apple's AAC.
And to further hinder things it seems that Mozilla is all for only natively supporting OGG.
So I'm curious. Why can't Firefox, and other browsers, use System installed codecs for playing media? Why do they have to be installed into the browser, or depend on technologies like Flash? It just seems like bad design to me.
Perhaps, I'm just naive about this, but this whole codec war is just a nuisance. Can anyone point me to information, laws, and other information regarding why browsers can't use system installed codecs? I would also like to hear other users opinions about this as well. Thanks!
Edit In case this comes off as not being a programming question, I want to clarify that to me this issue directly affects web programmers. For example, in the case of audio support, do we have to use flash? or will these issues eventually be handled in HTML5. Where does it seem that things are going, technology-wise, in regards to this issue?
The <object> or <embed> tag could be used to reference any media, and allowed to transcend the browser for handling. The purpose of HTML5's media is to somewhat standardize a common encoding (lowest common denominator if you will) across platforms and have a browser-native player. The Ogg container and various encodings make perfect sense.
Related
Im learning to code web stuff. ruby,javascript...
I would like to do something that makes noise like www.audiotool.com
The app is basically a DAW, digital audio workstation, is fast and sounds good... you can eveb use samples and save projects in the cloud.
But my main question is which languages or tools can make an app like this ?
but i don't know which languages make this kind of apps posible ?
is it creating the sound in the browser, or in a server and sending it back ?
any guesses?
Audiotool.com uses flash to synthesize audio. Their FAQ says that you should update your flash player if you're having trouble, so that seems like a pretty strong indication that they use flash.
However, if you want to make music apps, I would advise against using flash. Newer devices and operating systems will drop support for flash (iPhones/iPads already don't support flash, I believe).
If you want a future-proofed music-making solution, you can do that all client-side in javascript with the web-audio api.
I have authored, and actively maintain a javascript library that aims to simplify the process of building complex apps with the web audio api. If you're just getting started with making music on the web, you might want to check it out. The web audio api is not terribly beginner-friendly, in my opinion. https://github.com/rserota/wad
I'm trying to understand what the introduction of the Web Audio API has meant for the development of web based games.
Flash games can of course do some quite advanced audio processing, and for simpler games the audio element was maybe enough. But how has Web Audio API changed the game dev scene? In terms of what can be done, supported platforms and so on.
Supported platforms are Chrome, Safari (with some prefixing caveats) and Firefox across all supported hardware/OS platforms; IE is working on development, though the longer tail of versions will take a while to deploy.
Web Audio enables very complex processing, but also very precise timing and multiple sounds; sound management is far, far easier than previously possible in HTML5. In short, Web Audio dramatically improves the story for game audio development on the Web - which, of course, was one of its goals.
I'm just wondering how, and which audio player I should use to allow my visitors to play audio files on my website.
Thanks!
I use a flash-based player cleverly called "MP3 Player". Nice looking and easy to use (and free!)
Flash is the most widely available platform capable of playing sounds in a web page. It is highly likely that flash is already installed in their browser.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/156/tn_15660.html
I want to build a Firefox extension that will allow me to directly manipulate the audio output, applying live filters and effects, from (for example) a streaming video site. Im struggling to find any good resources to help me. I think the effects bit will be ok but I need to find a way of intercepting the audio stream output. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Thanks,
Tom
Sorry, it's not possible. I don't know of any web browsers that expose an interface that lets you manipulate audio output.
Keep in mind that a lot of audio output comes from plug-ins like Flash, and those plug-ins are sending the audio output directly to your operating system - they're not even routing it through your web browser. So it wouldn't be possible for your web browser to intercept the sound if it wanted to.
I have a large amount of audio stored on my web server in a very custom format that can't be replayed by anything other than my own application. That application is a Win32 app that can connect to my web server and stream and replay that audio.
I'd really like to be able to do the streaming and replaying from within a browser, but don't know where to start. Ideally I'd like the technology to be cross-platform (unlike my current Win32 app) and cross-browser (IE 6 and above and Firefox).
My current thoughts are to look at things like:
Flash, but doesn't that only replay mp3 audio?
Java, are VMs freely available still?
Converting the audio to a WAV file on the web server and then using someone else's plugin to replay that file. I'd rather keep the conversion off the web server for performance reasons, but is still an option.
Writing my own custom plugin to do the complete stream and replay operation.
Any guidance would be most useful.
Please note that the audio is not music and that simply converting to another audio format is not trivial. The audio that is stored also changes frequently (every minute) would need constant conversion.
Why are you using a proprietary music format? I'd probably not even bother downloading a program to listen to it.
I would suggest you convert it to mp3 and then use flash.
Building your own plugin would probably be hard, there are so many different platforms you'd have to cater for, something like flash is written for them already.
Apart from converting server-side: Implement a decoder for your format in ActionScript or Java. Then you can write a Flash movie or Java applet that plays it. Both languages/runtimes should be fast enough to decode in realtime unless your format is very complex. Flash would be the more accessible of the two, since nearly everyone has the plugin installed. (It's possible that playing a raw sound buffer isn't supported by older Flash versions than 10, I'm no expert on that.) The Java plugin is definitely free, but you'd require the users to install it.
I'd go with converting the audio to WAV (or MP3) on the server. Writing your own cross-platform browser component would be a lot of work, thanks to the different ways the major OSes handle their audio APIs.
Try taking a look at shoutcast.
Basically its a server app that will stream music to any client that connects to it through a browser (effectively your own radio station). I've never used it myself but should be straight forward.
Another idea is winamp remote. Again you install the app on the server but this time you can browse your music collection on their website and play individual songs.