DVDs, CDs, and Audiocassettes of the April 2008 General Conference in English are now available at Church distribution centers. A multilanguage DVD is being prepared and will be available in a few weeks.
Of course, you can also listen and watch online in many language in the general conference section of the online Gospel Library (generalconference.lds.org).
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…except for the priesthood session.
Currently, LDS.org hosts video files of conference in 2 flavors of Windows Media and Apple Quicktime.
There are 2 legal ways (in the United States) for Linux users to view a Windows Media video stream. The first way is for Linux users to pay for a few codecs at fluendo.com. Once these codecs are installed, then Linux users can watch General Conference. The second way is for Linux users to download RealPlayer for Linux which supports the new versions of Windows Media and is free.
Users of operating systems other than Windows, MAC and Linux may be out of luck. You may not be able to purchase codecs for your system even if you wanted to and RealPlayer only supports the 3 operating systems.
The long term solution is to provide media streams in a non-proprietary format such as Theora: http://www.theora.org/
Instead of 2 proprietary formats of video files, LDS.org could offer 1 proprietary format that’s playable on a few (albeit, the majority) of operating systems and offer 1 non-proprietary format that’s available on everything.
Mac’s can watch the Windows Media Format by using a licensed and legal free plug in available here:
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_compare.htm (Mac users can pay for extra features if they want to.)
Windows Media could be one offering and Theora (or equivalent non-proprietary format) could be the other.
I would like to request that mp3 files of the audio of the General Conference Priesthood Sessions be posted on-line, so we can listen to them as with the other sessions. This information is published in the Ensign and is also on the CD’s and DVD’s of conference, so it’s hard to understand why they are not posted on-line. Thanks for considering this request.
I wouldn’t fuss over the “legal” aspects of codecs. Just install VLC from your repositories and connect to the feed. Those patents are pretty much invalid anyway and no one ever got in trouble for installing codecs.
Where can I get the MOTAB audio downloads? I saw them once, but I can’t remember where.
Bruce and Rich,
Just look on the page (generalconference.lds.org), the priesthood session IS THERE. It will be provided online in audio, video, and text beginning with this conference.
Andrew,
The MOTAB music is included in the audio files for the FULL SESSIONS at generalconference.lds.org.
Yaro: My thought to the comment “I wouldn’t fuss over the ‘legal’ aspects of codecs.” is that I believe in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law–not just in word but in deed. The fact is that people have been in trouble for not honoring the patented MP3 requirement as seen from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#cite_note-42 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#cite_note-43 and many other pages.
ldsWebguy: If the church is required to pay royalties because they are currently using the MP3 format, then it would also free up dollars for the church. (Based on http://vorbis.com/faq/#flic )
More to what Darren said above: Almost universally speaking, the ogm and ogg formats take less space and bandwidth for better quality than the currently-used MP3 formats. (Based on http://vorbis.com/faq/#_fan and http://vorbis.com/faq/#_quality)
If the church sent out media streams in the ogm and/or ogg formats, then that would allow users of Windows, Mac, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, BeOS, OS/2, etc. to view and/or listen to conference. (See http://www.vorbis.com/software/ .)
I understand in the past disk space and cost were issues with streaming conference in both windows media and Real Audio formats. (Based on previous personal communications with the Church)
The ogm and ogg formats have more capabilities (such as chapters (i.e. Individual speakers) and metadata (i.e. Title of talks)) for the Church to take advantage of ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats )
If their is an honest desire from the Church IT folks to look into this possibility, then please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_Media