[Bug 27249] Correct the “All or Nothing” Approach Currently Implemented For HTMLMediaElement / MSE

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27249

Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> changed:

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                 CC|                            |silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com

--- Comment #1 from Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> ---
>     1) The browser automatically determines the file types / codecs of the
> sources and chooses the “best” source to play.

That's not how it works. Out of a list of <source> elements, the browser picks
the *first* one it can play, even if it's not the best one.

> At the very least allowing greater control over the buffer (whereby
> “greater” I just mean the ability to start and stop the buffer, and
> *perhaps* control its length) would allow most developers to stick with
> HTMLMediaElement as opposed to being forced to use the more complex MSE.

We've had discussions about exposing the ability to control buffering before.
That's how the @preload attribute was created. It was, however, always deemed
that the browser has more in-depth knowledge about the CPU state, the network
state, the memory situation and similar information than the Web developer.
Thus, browsers should be in a better position to decide about how much to
buffer.

> At the most there needs to be a far greater degree of transparency in all
> the work the browser does regarding media. Metadata, file type, codec
> information, etc. should *all* be exposed to the developer, along with
> functions for determining them from an arbitrary
> SourceBuffer/ArrayBuffer/Blob/etc. The aim should be to ensure that the
> handling of media can continue to be dynamic (e.g. no manifests) and
> performant (e.g. no javascript based container parsing to get metadata)
> regardless of where along the continuum of HTMLMediaElement <-> MSE the
> developer chooses to reside.

There has been a desire to expose more metadata about the selected resource in
the past. The question about metadata is always: which to pick. A whole W3C
Working Group has discussed this issue and come up with a spec:
http://www.w3.org/2008/WebVideo/Annotations/ . However, I am not aware of any
efforts of browsers to implement these.

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Received on Thursday, 6 November 2014 09:33:43 UTC