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

On Jul 3, 2009, at 6:26 PM, Matthew Ratzloff wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com 
> > wrote:
> 10 years ago I was mkaing the same arguments that you are. But now,
> after having tried to push for time-aligned text inside audio-visual
> files for so long, I have come to the conclusion that it is actually
> easier to deal with separate files than with captions inside media
> files. As external files, they are easier to edit, easier to share,
> easier to access, easier to parse, easier to handle on a server (e.g.
> in a database) and generally easier to manage.
>
> Agreed.  Perhaps this is naive, but something like the following  
> seems sensible to me:
>
> <video src="videos/video.ogg" captions="videos/video_captions.xml"/>

If we want to support external caption files, then I would recommend  
using an existing format that matches what can be embedded in media  
files, such as the W3C's own Timed Text Authoring Format, or MPEG-4  
Part 17 / 3GPP Timed Text.

That way you could use the same format whether your captions are in  
the media file, or external.

Regards,
Maciej