Help talk:Media

Can MIDI files be made playable in browser?


I can download them, but it's disruptive to the article-reading experience, and the downloaded MIDI file will interrupt any other media I might be listening to on my desktop player, and typically loop annoyingly (if it's a short file demonstrating a handful of notes). Perhaps they could be auto-converted to browser-playable OGG somehow? Equinox ◑ 21:08, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Need help file would not play right Curtisarmstrongfan (talk) 07:29, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Could you show example article with this? Depending on a browser and way to use it, midi files most likely can be played in the webbrowser. There are few ways to do that at least in Firefox and Chrome (and derivatives), without any extensions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.6.34.246 (talk) 11:49, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I also found a few JavaScript MIDI players on GitHub, so Wikipedia could use one of these players to play MIDI files in the browser. Jarble (talk) 17:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * For example, this MIDI player works in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers. This could be useful, if Wikipedia doesn't yet have a built-in MIDI player. Jarble (talk) 17:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the problem. Using any browser in Windows, I've never encountered a MIDI file that can't be played if it's presented via  or Listen. I've added examples at the top of this section. MIDI files using Audio are a different matter:  – clicking the blue link relies on your local configuration, clicking the speaker goes to the file page, where it can be played directly. Lesson: don't use  for MIDI files. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:30, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

OGG and iPhones
Some people have told me the ogg files on Wikipedia do not play or open on their iPhones. This iPhone FAQ site also says they do not support the format. Are there alternatives to ogg that can be used on Wikipedia? WP:SAMPLE only mentions ogg, as far as I can tell. This seems significant; most people look things up on their phones these days. Dan56 (talk) 21:50, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Why iPhone doesn't support ogg / vorbis? It is really silly to not support that. Maybe Firefox on iOS could at least try to support ogg somehow. It should be doable, even if it uses webkit. Also a new more advanced codec is gaining traction in last years called Opus. It is already supported by many browsers fully, and partially by Safari on iOS (technical preview), and has better quality, compression rate and range of applications (even very low bitrates), and new features (lower latency, higher resolution, wider range of bandwidth, etc). So, probably one day Wikipedia could reencode files into Opus. Support for Opus is already mandatory in WebRTC, and is present in Safari for some time for WebRTC. But support for non-rtc media playback (audio alone, or video with Opus audio) is lacking. But really at the moment Ogg is most prominent, and things will not change for many years. Also reencoding to Opus from Ogg doesn't really bring many advantages and space / bandwidth saving for wikipedia servers are probably not that big in this respect (most of the ogg files on Wikipedia are really short, and heavily compressed, often monophonic at low bitrate - this is mostly to allow people with really slow / expensive network connections to listen to things in real time). I am sure one day Opus could be beneficial, but having both formats available on media wiki (and all servers, storage, backups and on mirrors and caches) would be a bit expensive. 81.6.34.246 (talk) 11:48, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion: Change 'personal computers' to 'personal devices'.
As above. Many people view Wikipedia on their phone or tablet and therefore the term 'personal computers' has become outdated. 86.160.116.42 (talk) 02:43, 13 January 2024 (UTC)