Re: Shifting gears for a second (was RE: Codecs for <video> and <audio>)

On Jul 3, 2009, at 2:39 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:

>
> Video files are currently handled as opaque elements in the <video>
> tag - there is no API to expose any captions that may be inside the
> file. The only system that is able to get access is the media
> framework and it is typically buried deep inside the browser. As long
> as there is no standard API to access captions for a media file, they
> are not exposed to search engines and screen readers.

Search engines don't need a client API in the browser, they just need  
to know how to parse the relevant media container format to extract  
the text track.

(No comment in general on whether embedded or separate caption tracks  
are better; I haven't studied the tradeoffs closely.)

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 3 July 2009 10:15:54 UTC