Re: Survey ready on Media Text Associations proposal

Hi John,

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 12:31 PM, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote:
> Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>>
>>
>> We had lengthy discussions about whether we should add an element that
>> explicitly only links to external text streams or is able to also be
>> applied to other types of content, such as external audio or video
>> tracks.
>
> For example, a 'picture in picture' type of solution which supported Sign
> Language (via human or perhaps avatar signing).

Indeed.


>> In HTML5, a media element is not regarded as a composited resource.
>> There is a main resource and it is the important bit - everything else
>> is just additional information on top of that. Or speaking concretely
>> in our example: the external tracks make no sense without the video
>> element.
>
> Hey Silvia, I would challenge that one a bit. External tracks do and can
> make sense without the video - for example a deaf blind user has little
> need for the actual "star player" but very much needs the "supporting
> actor(s)" for comprehension.  As well, text tracks will factor
> significantly (I believe) in search/indexing - while I applaud YouTube and
> Google for their Press Announcement yesterday, it also occurs to me that
> having those texts associated with the videos makes indexing and search
> easier and more relevant/accurate for Google, who are, after all, in the
> search business right?

Sure, this is all correct, but a bit beside the point I was trying to
make, which focused on where - from a playback POV - the control is.

There are indeed situations where a specific application or a specific
user will make do with the replacement text only for the video. These
are side use cases beside the main use case. Some users will even
completely ignore all media elements and will much prefer any linked
and non-timed transcript that could be found.

However, the video element is primarily an audio-visual experience for
the majority of users and it sets the pacing of the tracks that link
to time-aligned additional tracks, such as subtitles, captions, audio
descriptions, or sign language. That's really all I wanted to express.

Hope that was a little more enlightening.

Cheers,
Silvia.

Received on Saturday, 6 March 2010 02:42:18 UTC