Re: <video> toggling video rendering

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:20:47 -0400, Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:25:29 +0200, Michael A. Puls II  
> <shadow2531@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If you load <video> on some site and just want to hear the audio,
>
> Seems like an uncommon request.

Perhaps, but I don't mind making it. :)

> Does any media player support this?

VideoLan (the external player) does. Haven't seen and flash players or WMP  
do it though. The VideoLan browser plugin probably could do it, but don't  
see a method that's currently present to do it.

>> is there a way to turn off the video output so you can save some cpu  
>> and just listen to the audio?
>
> You can hide the <video> in a number of ways

display: none in Firefox seems to cut the cpu usage. But, I'm not sure if  
it cuts all activity with the video renderer or not. visibility: hidden  
doesn't seem to work for cutting the cpu usage much, but probably should.

'display: none' does affect layout though unless you wrap <video> in  
something.

I think that turning off the video part and showing just the poster or  
black screen would be cool.

> or use <audio>, and then the browser can optimize away the video  
> decoding.

Yes, I see that this works. But, that seems more complicated to switch  
between <video> and <audio> to get the effect.

>> If not, I think that would be totally awesome if you could do that  
>> (wish youtube and all the other video sites did that).
>>
>> Something like video.toggleVideoOutput() so the site can provide a  
>> button.
>
> The page can set video.hidden to do this.

You just mean a class selector that sets display: none for example?

>> Also, have the functionality present in the browser-provided controls.
>
> I guess the browser is free to provide this functionality in the UI.

O.K.

-- 
Michael

Received on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 09:41:29 UTC