RE: <device> proposal (for video conferencing, etc)

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Nick Lothian wrote:
> > >
> > > Perhaps I am missing something, but this requirement isn't entirely 
> > > obvious to me :) Why do we need to agree on a codec any more than we 
> > > needed for the <video> tag?
> >
> > We need to for <video> also.
> >
> > However, in this case we need to even more, because otherwise there's 
> > no guarantee that a user with one browser could chat to a user with 
> > another browser, which makes the whole exercise pointless.
> 
> Won't that go via a server, which could potentially transcode?

When we do go through a server, it would certainly be better if the server 
didn't have to transcode every frame. That's a lot of load on the server. 
But I think ideally we'd eventually come up with a client-to-client 
protocol, and so the server couldn't transcode even if it wanted to.

Also, if the clients can't all implement the same codec, it's highly 
unlikely that the server will be able to implement the superset of all of 
them. So I don't think we can rely on that.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 17 December 2009 02:31:27 UTC