How to create Ogg videos in Linux (with GUI)

Following up on my previous post about converting videos to Ogg Theora, there’s also an easy way for those who like a GUI.

Although it’s possible to use VLC for Ogg encoding, I had problems with the audio and video being out of sync. Fortunately I found another way – enter OggConvert.

Written in Python by Tristan Brindle, there are packages for the major Linux distributions as well as a version for Windows. Not only that, it’s open source (GNU LGPL), preserves metadata when converting and is extremely easy to use:

1. Fire up OggConvert
2. Select the source video (or audio) file
3. Click convert
4. Voila! Enjoy your Ogg video

By default, the target file is saved in the same directory and with the same name as the source file but with an .ogg or .ogv extension. The default quality settings seem a bit low but should be adequate for most purposes.

When done, your Ogg video is now ready to use in your HTML5 pages:

<video src="video.ogg" width="320" autobuffer controls>
  <p>Sorry, your browser can't play this video but you can
  <a href="video.ogg">download it here</a>.</p>
</video>