Re: Proposal to add defaultDevice attribute to getMediaDevices.

Dear Harald,
Please find my comments inline.


On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>wrote:

>  On 03/12/2014 12:32 PM, Kiran Kumar wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I would like to add this to bug list.
> Please let me know if you have any comments.
>
>
> I would like to not add it.
>
> As has been noted, there isn't always an obvious default device. So if the
> flag is added, the JS must be written to handle the condition where no
> default device is in the list. But since this may be a rare case, JS apps
> might choose to ignore this possibility - which is bad for app portability.
>

[Kiran] It is not obvious to have a defaultDevice but most of the mobile
devices have default devices like front camera or back camera... Any new
thing will increase the processing, but I don't agree addition of this
attribute will result in too much complexity for checking. Generally most
of the devices have a single device.


>
>  If the JS wishes to get a device, and it doesn't care about which one, it
> could just getUserMedia(). Which one is returned may vary depending on
> configuration parameters, constraints, or whether some other program has
> opened the device (for OSes that do exclusive device access).
>
> [Kiran] This will be helpful to give the judgement to user, ofcourse
getMediaDevices() itself is meant for that. But in some applications, we
can have a use case like if the selected device is not available, then go
for the default device, instead of resulting in error.

[Kiran] For example, my laptop is having a built-in-camera, when I want to
chat with my friend, I will attache a webcam that supports high definition/
with higher pixel number. I prefer to access the external webcam attached,
but if I am not able to access that in any case, instead of resulting in
failure it will select the default built-in-camera.

The only use case I can see is to preselect the default device in a list of
> devices, so that the user can tell which device will be opened if he
> doesn't select one - and as seen above, this is not guaranteed to be the
> device that actually gets selected (some other program may have grabbed it
> before the user selects a device).
>
> [Kiran] I agree.

> I see increased complexity, without a corresponding size of benefit. So
> I'd like to not do this.
>
>
> [Kiran] I see more benefit as  I explained in the above example. What do
you say ....

>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 3:43 PM, Kiran Kumar <g.kiranreddy4u@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> It is not universally true for all,
>>
>>  When I connect an external webcam to my desktop PC, which has no
>> camera, Mozilla is displaying its names as YUV-xxx-camera.
>> Laptops are also not showing "default" prefix in the names.
>>
>>  I am not sure which devices/SO's are showing the "default" prefix.
>>
>>  Thanks,
>> Kiran.
>>
>>
>>
>>  On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Iñaki Baz Castillo <ibc@aliax.net>wrote:
>>
>>> 2014-03-10 6:51 GMT+01:00 Kiran Kumar <g.kiranreddy4u@gmail.com>:
>>>  > I would like to propose adding a defaultDevice attribute which
>>> indicates
>>> > which device is the default device out of the list.
>>> >
>>> > dictionary MediaDeviceInfo {
>>> >     DOMString       deviceId;
>>> >     MediaDeviceKind kind;
>>> >     DOMString       label;
>>> >     DOMString       groupId;
>>> >
>>> >     bool            defaultDevice;
>>> > };
>>> >
>>> > This will allow a default value checked while displaying the list of
>>> > devices.
>>>
>>>
>>>  Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK the multimedia subsystem in some
>>> SO's report a "default sound card", "default mic" and "default
>>> webcam".
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Iñaki Baz Castillo
>>> <ibc@aliax.net>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>