Re: Intro - Multi-device Timing CG

Thanks for reaching out and for the links to your work! 

In addition to these excellent questions from Daniel, I am wondering about web browser support (or anticipated browser support) — what do you expect? 

What is the relationship, if any, between Multi-device timing and TTML? Are the APIs overlapping or complementary (or “it’s complicated”)?  In EPUB3, we use SMIL to represent media synchronization, which gives us a declarative syntax, but no API. Ideally for web publications, we’d have both.

Marisa

> On Mar 12, 2018, at 11:03 AM, Daniel Weck <daniel.weck@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for your input Ingar (I assume this is your firstname?)
> 
> The "timing object" certainly looks like a useful and powerful API.
> If I am not mistaken this proposal focuses mainly on programmatic usage? (Javascript)
> 
> If so, do you envision some kind of declarative syntax that would allow content creators (web and digital publishing) to encode a "static" / persistent representation of synchronized multi-media streams?
> For example EPUB3 "read aloud" / "talking books" are currently authored using the Media Overlays flavour of SMIL (XML), and long-form synchronized text+audio content is typically generated via some kind of semi-automated production process.
> 
> I am thinking specifically about: (1) an HTML document, (2) a separate audio file representing the pre-recorded human narration of the HTML document, and (3) some kind of meta-structure / declarative syntax that would define the synchronization "points" between HTML elements and audio time ranges.
> Note that most existing "talking book" implementations render such combined text/audio streams by "highlighting" / emphasizing individual HTML fragments as they are being narrated (using CSS styles), but the same declarative expression could be rendered with a karaoke-like layout, etc.
> Of course, there are also other important use-cases such as video+text, video+audio, etc., but I just wanted to pick your brain about a concrete use-case in digital publishing / EPUB3 e-books :)
> 
> Cheers, and thanks!
> Daniel
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 11 March 2018 at 21:34, Ingar Mæhlum Arntzen <ingar.arntzen@gmail.com <mailto:ingar.arntzen@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi Marisa
> 
> Chris Needham of the Media & Enternainment IG made me aware of the CG your setting up. 
> 
> This is a welcome initiative, and it is great to see more people expressing the need for better sync support on the Web !
> 
> I'm the chair of Multi-device Timing CG [2], so I thought I'd say a few words about that as it seems we have similar objectives. Basically, the scope of the Multi-device Timing CG is a broad one; synchronization of anything with anything on the Web, whether it is text synced with A/V within a single document, or across multiple devices. We have also proposed a full solution to this problem for standardization, with the timing object [3] being the central concept. I did have a look at the requirements document [4] you linked to, and it seems to me the timing object (and the other tools we have made available [5]) should be a good basis for addressing your challenges. For instance, a karaoke-style text presentation synchronized with audio should be quite easy to put together using these tools.
> 
> If you have some questions about the model we are proposing, and how it may apply to your use cases, please send them our way :)
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Ingar Arntzen
> 
> [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sync-media-pub/2018Feb/0000.html <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sync-media-pub/2018Feb/0000.html>
> [2] https://www.w3.org/community/webtiming/ <https://www.w3.org/community/webtiming/>
> [3] http://webtiming.github.io/timingobject/ <http://webtiming.github.io/timingobject/>
> [4] https://github.com/w3c/publ-wg/wiki/Requirements-and-design-options-for-synchronized-multimedia <https://github.com/w3c/publ-wg/wiki/Requirements-and-design-options-for-synchronized-multimedia>
> [5] https://webtiming.github.io/timingsrc/ <https://webtiming.github.io/timingsrc/>
> 
>