Seth Kenlon -
Speaking Topic: Video Codecs and the Free World

Seth Kenlon is a video editor and *nix geek who has worked for many companies, including Oxygen Network, UPN, ISIS Productions, and Apple. Seth is also an active member of the Ubuntu community, both in the Screencasts team (online video HowTo's) and the Southern California LoCo. Currently Seth is pursuing professional-level, efficient and effective video editing and encoding on entirely Free Software.

Abstract

Seth will first define what a "codec" is and why they exist (to make media deliverable to the end user on either a website, downloadable file, or DVD disc). He will discuss the economics and politicks behind a great number of codecs, notably Real Media, Flash, and Quicktime. He will also reveal the difference between file formats (.avi, .mov, .mpg, etc) and the actual codecs being used within these formats. He will reveal how to find out for one's self what codec one is dealing with, how to acquire and install the proper codecs so that they can be used across their Linux system. He will discuss which media players the Free Software community should encourage for maximum compatibility and playability of OGG across Operating Systems, and how to encode perfect-looking video with ffmpeg and ffmpeg2theora.