Enable MP3 support for Commons uploads and TMH/etc. playback | Hacker News Reader

Enable MP3 support for Commons uploads and TMH/etc. playback

phabricator.wikimedia.org

42 pointsyuhong26 comments

Never thought I'd see MP3 as a free, open standard. Will Safari drop support for it now?

You jest, but you do realise native Opus support was added to iOS11 and macOS 10.13 right?

That’s pretty awesome. Do you perhaps have any link to more info about this?

https://webkit.org/blog/7726/announcing-webrtc-and-media-cap...

> Today we are thrilled to announce WebKit support for WebRTC, available on Safari on macOS High Sierra, iOS 11, and Safari Technology Preview 32. […] Safari supports modern audio codecs such as Opus

Neat! This seems like a very promising development.

In standalone files, though? Or just in WebRTC?

https://webkit.org/blog/7726/announcing-webrtc-and-media-cap... only talks about WebRTC, but according to https://hetzel.net/2017-06-12/ios-11-opus-support-in-podcast...

> iOS 11 comes with native playback support for the Opus audio codec inside the CAF container.

> In Beta 1, there is no support for playing Opus in CAF files in Safari, but…

> Podcasts.app supports Opus playback, if you claim the file is AAC, although it’s CAF containing Opus.

So, it doesn't support Opus in its native container format, but you could potentially do some JS trickery. Hmm :/

There is a lot of mp3 media out there, but I would encourage people to use Opus[1] where possible.

[1] http://opus-codec.org/comparison/

is this built into device hardware?

Sure! As Opus is used for audio in WebRTC and many Voip products there are hardware implementations available and shipped in masses.

From the discussions there, in summary, it seemed that: MP3 will be supported by MediaWiki, WMF legal team has approved usage MP3 in Wikimedia projects, and Wikimedia Commons and other wikis will discuss whether to enable MP3 uploading.

Finally one will be able to play the embeddded audio files that are on wiki pages on sone platforms/software. MP3 is far better supported everywhere than OGG.

You can already play Wikipedia's audio files on Edge or Safari. Try it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Adventure_Lights.ogg

Spoiler: it's ogv.js.

Note this has been a problem as long as Wikipedia existed though.

Cool, but, as for your example, I didn't recognize those sounds as music and for a moment thought I couldn't play ogg after all. Try instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mozart_-_Eine_kleine_Nach...

Doesn’t work on iOS, even though the official ogv.js demo works.

Adding on to this: iOS doesn't play mp3 for mp4 containers either. Encoding media to play on an iDevice means resorting to AAC, which doesn't have as good licensed codecs.

I don't see a compelling reason to enable this. Opus is superior in every way.

> I don't see a compelling reason to enable this.

Clients support.

WebRTC uses Opus. I don't think a web browser that does not support WebRTC is worth caring about.

WebRTC requires Opus support for WebRTC. That does not mean arbitrary containers with an Opus stream inside is supported.

For instance Lollipop supports Opus in a Matroska container, iOS11 supports Opus in a CAF container, ...

So? Even Microsoft Edge supports Opus in webm.

1. LAV filters do that, if you can't install LAV filters (Windows 10S?), it won't work

2. and as expected you're now tearing the lawn running with the goalposts, supporting opus and supporting opus in webm are — as I just told you — very different requirements

https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/04/18/webm-vp9-and-...

edit: I won't continue arguing since you keep editing your posts.

Some audio only exists as mp3. Transcoding to Opus will decrease quality.

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