Re: [minutes] 20090821 Timed Text teleconference

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Sean Hayes<Sean.Hayes@microsoft.com> wrote:
> Yes I've looked at this, we did discuss it briefly; although the notes don't reflect it.
>
> I think it's a reasonable basic approach, but I'd like to see it be a little more general, allowing for the possibility of audio description tracks using the <audio> tag for <video> and even sign translation tracks, also I don't think there is a need to invent much, SMIL <audio> and <video> are in fact synonyms of the more general media <ref>, as are <text> and <animation> and others. In my opinion HTML could adopt this same notion. I don't think HTML should be looking at importing a lot of SMIL (although I guess they could reference a SMIL file with a media tag), but by adopting the basic media module <ref> and its synonyms, and allowing the sync* attributes, this could all be achieved.

Hi Sean,

As it stands, the HTML5 video element expects audio description tracks
and sign translation tracks to come through the binary resource as
additional audio or video tracks of the video file. Thus, they cannot
be created through HTML markup. However, I think what is missing is
the notion that a Web browser should parse such tracks and add them to
a menu is created for the video, so users can activate them.

HTML does not like dealing with abstract resources (this was what the
<embed> and <object> elements did), but rather prefers dealing with
concrete data for which specific attributes and API calls can be made
available. For example, width and height attributes don't make much
sense on an audio element, while they are very important for video.
Thus, I don't think a general <ref> element makes much sense, since it
would be a step back towards what <embed> and <object> used to be.

Also, I am curious about the sync attributes you are referring to. I
found endsync http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-SMIL3-20081201/smil-timing.html#adef-endsync
, which requires par and sec elements and thus creates a whole media
composition language. Is this what you are after? Can you give an
example of what you would like to see available in HTML5 in that
respect?

Thanks,
Silvia.

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 23:50:06 UTC