RE: ΄πΈ΄: Constraints and Capabilities API for getUserMedia: more detailed proposal

Bryan wrote:
> But I'm not sure that would be enough, unless the chooser provided details
> (eg supported quality) that are important tio the use case,
> and even then app would need to guide the user to make the right selection.

This seems odd.

Imagine I have 3 cameras:
One facing me.
One facing away from me.
One in a corner facing something else.

I visit an application which provides criteria which manage to rule out the camera facing me.
But I want to use a camera that's looking at me. I know what the cameras are and what they do because the UA is showing me previews from them. I know that the one facing away from me will not work for me. I go to the corner, adjust the camera, and then I select it.

You're imagining some very large number of input devices where the user can't possibly make a reasonable decision and where the user shouldn't care. That seems unlikely for cameras. If the user has a bunch of cameras, the user almost certainly cares about the cameras and has a definite preference which actually matters.

Now, the audio case might be different. Perhaps we'll end up with dozens of microphones available to a UA and the user won't be able to make an informed decision. But again, that seems relatively unlikely. Any UA which is going to ever let the user make a decision about an input source (and for privacy and security reasons, the UA will have to do this) will need to let the user preview the data from the source before choosing it. I'm not going to connect to a Teleconference and let it start streaming audio where you can hear background noise from a neighbor's apartment/cubicle, I *need* as a user to be able to determine that the microphone is too sensitive. Now, there may be one or two amazingly well designed applications which can filter out such noises, but most applications aren't going to do that. Probably users will be able to find one nice site which lets them do an Audio or Video test (perhaps an Echo Test), they'll select each of their devices in turn and then name them, possibly with a comment reminding them about such attributes. But when they go to select the devices for use with an actual Teleconferencing system, they aren't going to want to give that system direct access to all of their input devices, they'll want to choose the device that makes sense for their purpose - within the constraints requested by that Teleconferencing system.
 
> Also I'm not sure if it would be best to allow the UA to change the selected
> device on the fly. This could also be handled by the app, by checking for new
> devices during setup or use of the app.

This assumes that everyone will write wonderful applications. It's overly optimistic.

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Received on Wednesday, 11 April 2012 13:39:06 UTC