A few of the reasons for a dedicated Opus subforum:
- The vast majority of the posts in "Other Lossy Codecs" over the past year have been Opus-related.
- Across the forums, overall, Opus-related posts clearly outnumber those related to several other codecs which have their own dedicated forums (Vorbis, MPC, WavPack), and the post traffic is comparable to that for the most popular codecs (MP3, AAC, FLAC).
- Due to the RFC, the WebRTC MTI, the organizations backing it, etc it's clear Opus is not just a fad-of-the-day but is going to have some staying power.
- NullC &co have had to keep repeating instructions and caveats for prospective testers and for those making and distributing builds. Collecting these in a sticky thread in an Opus forum would make these much more visible, lessen the need to keep repeating material and keep correcting the same misconceptions, and thus alleviate frustrations.
- With a dedicated subforum, I think people would be more inclined to start new threads for new Opus-related discussions, which is more manageable than when tons of tangentially-related discussions are all packed into one >500 post thread.
I agree. MPC hasn't had a post since Apr 26 2012, 04:47...
I took a look last week and didn't see that many threads, but I think your point about stickies and shorter threads on single topics both make a lot of sense. I'd support the idea, assuming it is not a lot of work for the admins to implement.
On the same point as stickies (and this remains, sort-of 'site related discussion'), some of the same things worth putting in a sticky might be worthy of inclusion in the Wiki a.k.a. Knowledgebase. I notice that the Opus article is a short stub right now similar to the top of the Wikipedia article. While I made a lot of edits to the Wikipedia Opus (audio format) article (mainly for compliance with their specific Citation Needed tags), and we can include a number of Creative Commons graphs and spectrograms used there with proper attribution, I presume it's not OK to paste large chunks of the Wikipedia article verbatim. ?
It's probably more beneficial here to link to the Wikipedia article (and the Opus-codec.org page, as we already do) for background information, but to focus more on links to resources and methods to make use of Opus. That would include links to different compiles and commandlines plus typical instruction for encoding in foobar2000 and EAC, plus a short list of links to software (e.g. Firefox, Seamonkey, foobar2000) that support Opus files, opus streams etc and relevant forum threads on those subjects.
Also, a list of interactive applications that use Opus, such as Mumble would have a separate section as it's a different use case for the same codec.
Further, links to related internet standards - the RFC specifying Opus plus resources about WebRTC where Opus is to be one of the two Mandatory To Implement audio codecs.
I (obviously) support adding an Opus subforum. That would make it easier for us to track Opus-related topics so we can help users and fix any issues they discover.
I too agree, finding relevant information in the threads of "other lossy codecs" is quite difficult. As someone who's developing for embedded applications, filtering the rather low SNR of the lossy threads is just a waste of time.
In the same instant, I don't see the point for subforums like "MPC Musepack" which see very little traffic. Back in the day this might've been different. I'd suggest to merge those threads together with "other lossy codecs".
The only other suggestion I'd do, is to create another level of hierarchy, something like "xiph" and sort all related subforums under that. so Vorbis, FLAC, Opus, Speex, etc. can get their own subforums without cluttering the higher level oh hierarchy.
I took a look last week and didn't see that many threads...
It is true that the posts are clumped in rather few threads, which is, as I said, something a subforum would help with. Since the first Opus release in Feb. 2011 there's been about twenty Opus threads, with almost a thousand posts total. (This is across the whole site, not just the Other Lossy Codecs subforum, and it includes some posts relating to late versions of CELT.) 545 of those posts are in the single monstrous "IETF Opus codec now ready for testing" thread.
That's ~20x as many posts as MPC had over the same period, ~3x as many as WavPack, ~1.5x as many as Vorbis. Most of the Vorbis posts were centered around the aoTuV Beta6.03 release back in April 2011 while most of the Opus posts are from the past six months.
...some of the same things worth putting in a sticky might be worthy of inclusion in the Wiki a.k.a. Knowledgebase. I notice that the Opus article is a short stub right now...
Of course it'd be nice to have a solid article there, as well as a Recommended Encoder and Settings type page much like the one for Vorbis. I'd be willing to help with that. But the knowledgebase has seen rather few edits in recent years, and there have been tons of people posting here who seem to be unaware not only of basic vital information from the knowledgebase, which could prevent many repetitive silly discussions, but even of the knowledgebase's
existence. These give me the impression that knowledgebase traffic is rather low these days, that many of those visits it does get are from people who know most of that info already, and that putting information on the knowledgebase pages won't by itself help much with the problem of informing the uninformed.
I'll discuss this with some of our team, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Feel free to come up with a sticky thread if/when we add the subforum. Probably the easiest way to have an up-to-date sticky is by linking to the Wiki page (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Opus), which needs some work first.
In the same instant, I don't see the point for subforums like "MPC Musepack" which see very little traffic. Back in the day this might've been different. I'd suggest to merge those threads together with "other lossy codecs".
The MPC section was kept mostly for archival reasons, since the official Musepack forum opened in 2008. It's more or less deliberately inactive since then. Deleting it would be a shame, for there is much knowledge hidden in there (not just MPC-related), and dissolving it into "other lossy" would make no sense. I moved it to the bottom of the list now though.
I'll discuss this with some of our team, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Feel free to come up with a sticky thread if/when we add the subforum. Probably the easiest way to have an up-to-date sticky is by linking to the Wiki page (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Opus), which needs some work first.
I've updated the Wiki / Knowledgebase page (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Opus) subtantially, and although it's not fully backed up TOS#8 style, it's in accord roughly with published listening test and sources and the tables included may be a useful starting point for users to do their own tests for their own purposes and look at competitive rival codecs.
Any improvements are welcome.
I notice that there's no automation in the Knowledgebase index articles, so the Opus article (like many others) does not appear under Technical/Codecs or Lossy/Codec or similar menus. In fact there seem to be a number of articles that aren't easily found by browsing unless you search for them (I think lossyWAV is another)
I notice that there's no automation in the Knowledgebase index articles
I see it's based on inclusion of the Category tags, which I've now included so that it shows up under Codecs, Lossy and Encoder/Decoder (as it refers heavily to the reference software). There are not very many under Lossy, so I guess a lot of people have missed this.
I added a forum for Opus. No seperate tech/general sections for now, we'll see if that makes sense later.