Re: Media Resource In-band Tracks Community Group Launched

Olivier,

I agree that it would have been good to discuss this in the IG first to inform everyone. I had to be away unexpectedly last week and didn't notice this. We can discuss it now, though. No work has started, as yet.

But I'm pretty confident that there's no conflict here at all. This Community Group (CG) is both distinct from and complementary to the Web & TV Interest Group (IG) in both purpose, focus and membership.

Purpose: The purpose of this CG is to draft a spec in the specific area of mapping external specs, like MPEG-TS, to HTML5 in-band media tracks. This cannot be done in the IG because IG's are forbidden by W3C rules from writing specs. IG's develop requirements. CG's are allowed to draft specs. (Note: The CG draft spec would need to go to a Working Group (WG) to become a W3C standard.)

Focus: The focus of the CG is narrowly on mapping external specs, like MPEG-TS, to HTML5 in-band media tracks, whereas the IG and specifically the Media APIs Task Force (TF) is much more broadly focused.

Membership: Note also that the CG, unlike the IG, allows for direct participation by non-W3C members, which should help with the CG focus on external specs.

I think the IG can work with this CG, as we do with other CGs and WGs. Specifically, the Media APIs TF could definitely write requirements in the area of mapping external specs to HTML5 in-band media tracks and the CG could turn those requirements into a draft spec. (Likely it could be the same people, in many cases!)

Thanks,
mav

On Oct 22, 2013, at 12:24 PM, Olivier Thereaux <Olivier.Thereaux@bbc.co.uk>
 wrote:

> On 22 Oct 2013, at 17:07, public-council@w3.org wrote:
> 
>> With your support, the Media Resource In-band Tracks Community Group has been launched:
>> http://www.w3.org/community/inbandtracks/
> 
> It is surprising that this CG appears to have been proposed, voted up and created without any prior discussion in the web and TV IG:
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-and-tv/2013Oct/
> 
> Unless I am mistaken, this is rather close in scope to some of the work we are trying to get done in the Media APIs TF, isn't it?
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2011/webtv/wiki/Media_APIs
> 
>> This group will develop a specification defining how user agents should
>> expose in-band tracks as HTML5 media element video, audio and text
>> tracks so that Web applications can access the in-band track
>> information, through the media element, in a interoperable manner across
>> user agent implementations.
>> 
>> 
>> Media formats of interest are MPEG-2 transport stream, WebM and MPEG-4
>> file format. Other media formats containing in-band tracks may be
>> considered.
> 
> 
> This isn't just a case of “Why wasn't I consulted”. I am worried that this will have an impact on the momentum of the Media APIs TF, which we are somewhat struggling to keep up already.
> 
> Regards,
> --
> Olivier
> 
> 
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Received on Tuesday, 22 October 2013 17:30:41 UTC