[Bug 27025] Video and audio elements should specify video/audio formats, not implementations (codecs)

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27025

--- Comment #4 from Thue Janus Kristensen <thuejk@gmail.com> ---
> That is actually the case. You understand "codecs" as software, while the editors and people working on this understand it as "the algorithm".

Well, look at the other users than video compression uses the term codec, e.g.
https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-codec/ which contains e.g. a codec
for athe base64 format. Clearly the term codec refers to the program, and not
to e.g. the base64 format.

I am not in doubt that the editors of HTML5 had the right concept in their
head, but the terms they used were not very precise, and possibly wrong.

> Codec should actually be viewed as the "coding (or decoding) algorithm" used to transmit a video. Examples of codecs are H.264/AVC

OK, so take a look at section 0.5 of the H.264/AVC standard, which establishes
the H.264/AVC format (
http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-H.264-200305-S!!PDF-E&type=items
)

> The coded representation specified in the syntax is designed to enable a high compression capability for a desired image quality. [...] Encoding algorithms (not specified in this Recommendation | International Standard)

So how can H.264/AVC be an algorithm, as you say, if it doesn't specify the
algorithm to use? The term "codec" actually does not appear at all in the
H.264/AVC specification, which I think is a good indication that "codec" is not
an uncontroversial and clear word to use for H.264/AVC.

> HTML does not define the "codecs" parameter. HTML5 refers to the RFC 6381 [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6381] which defines a "codecs" parameter for MP4 files (and similar).

Fair enough, changing from the codecs parameter is probably not feasible. But I
still think the HTML5 specification should be more precisely formulated to
avoid ambiguity around the "codec" term. And I still think rfc6381 is using the
word "codec" wrongly, per my arguments above.

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Received on Sunday, 12 October 2014 18:37:28 UTC