[OLPC library] Content formats for the XS and XO

[Seth Woodworth]

I would add speex as a codec for human voice content.  I can pack about an
hour worth of audiobook into ~7mb using speex, and have it fairly nice.
Gstreamer on sugar plays .spx files just fine.  They are an ogg varient and
developed by xiph.

Ideally we could use the 1500+ hours of Human Read audiobook that Librivox
has produced and stored on archive.org in some of our deployments.

--Seth

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 10:21 PM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff at gmail.com>wrote:

> SJ gave me a heads up recently, and quite timely, about the need to
> discuss what formats we can support on the XS and the XO.
>
> My high level goals are that
>
> 1 - Local teams are able to include enormous amounts of gorgeous
> content coming from untold number of sources on the XS and XO. The
> teams handling deployments get to pick and choose content from many
> sources repositories repositories.
>
> 2 - The content is in such a format that we can serve it from the XS
> to XOs (and other clients) and we can also provide it as a bundle (or
> similar) so you can download it to the XO and take it with you.
>
> 3 - What we do is interoperable with the rest of the world as it
> exists. (ie: use established standards)
>
> In general, this means that we need content to be in the simplest,
> most standard formats possible. Project Gutemberg clearly gets this.
> ASCII, HTML, PNG, SVG and DublinCore metadata are my friends.
> Super-simple package formats based on them (think IMS-CP) make me
> happy.
>
> The XS is going to grow a "browse-and-download library content" leg
> sometime soon. It will be a facility that knows how to unpack and
> index the IMS-CP and SCORM metadata (which is all DublinCore stuff),
> and it'll be transparent to users how to browse, search and use any
> such content placed on the XS.
>
> It's about the content. No special client software, no special server
> software. This levels the ground for all the projects -- so you don't
> need to worry that your outrageously fantastic content won't be used
> because the player ain't sexy. Local teams don't have to worry about
> the burden of a particular content requiring special software.
> Teachers don't have to worry about the confusion of a different
> content player.
>
> My plan is to make that XS feature so that it can also automagically
> make a bundle for the XO to download -- after all, happiness is a warm
> bundle (  http://blog.laptop.org/2009/01/13/happiness-is-a-warm-bundle/
> ) :-)
>
> This also means that XS and XO can leverage the large existing pools
> of IMS-CP and SCORM content. And that any content you prepare for
> OLPC, you are also preparing for the world...
>
> That's my plan at least :-) -- no plan ever survives contact with reality.
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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