Expanding Web Media Tracks Use Cases

Timed Text Working Group,


Greetings. With regard to the W3C Video in the Web Activity (http://www.w3.org/2008/WebVideo/), which includes the Timed Text Working Group, the Media Fragments Working Group and the Media Annotations Working Group, I would like to express the importance of media tracks, and beyond text-based, to comment on the rough draft of the Timed Text Working Group charter (http://www.w3.org/2013/05/timed-text-charter.html), and to indicate that the Video in the Web Activity can include broader discussion and planned tasks with regard to media tracks.


The Timed Text Working Group should formally take on the work currently being done in the Web Media Text Tracks Community Group as well as the HTML5 activities pertaining to captions and subtitles. The W3C Video in the Web Activity, possibly the Timed Text Working Group, can broaden web media tracks discussions and planned related tasks, and can expand, can broaden, a list of documented web media track and API use cases.


Towards expanding web media tracks use cases, in addition to audio (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-video-element.html#audiotrack), video (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-video-element.html#videotrack) and text (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-video-element.html#texttrack) tracks topics, other media tracks topics include:


(1) XML tracks (XmlTrackCue, XmlTrackCueList, XmlTrack)
(2) RDF tracks (RdfTrackCue, RdfTrackCueList, RdfTrack)


(3) Temporal XML trees (XmlDeltaTrackCue, XmlDeltaTrackCueList, XmlDeltaTrack) (XML diff’ing, merging and patching) (see also: XML Diff and Patch Tool by Kyriakos Komvoteas, Change Detection in XML Trees: a Survey by Luuk Peters) (see also: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/projects/tau/tdom/)
(4) Temporal RDF graphs (RdfDeltaTrackCue, RdfDeltaTrackCueList, RdfDeltaTrack)


(5) MPEG-4 3D graphics (http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-4/3d-graphics-compression-model)


On topics (1), (2), (3) and (4), while XML and RDF can serialize to and deserialize from text-based track formats such as WebVTT, there are JavaScript API topics including as pertinent to the facilitation of new developer conveniences, the facilitation of web media object portability, the facilitation of the portability of various web media object features, as well as to the facilitation of various implementation optimizations.


In (1) and (2), cues contain XML or RDF data. In (3) and (4), cues contain diffs or deltas for XML trees or RDF graphs; XML DOM tree and RDF graph API interfaces could be available on XmlDeltaTrack and RdfDeltaTrack interfaces. The XML-based and RDF-based media tracks data, as envisioned for topics (1), (2), (3) and (4), would be extensible and versatile, utilizing a number of existing schemas and ontologies, and/or a number of schemas and ontologies to be developed, with each such schema or ontology facilitating new web media features.


On topic (5), video and 3D combinations, video and WebGL combinations, while pioneer topics, indicate, in addition to topics (1), (2), (3) and (4), a number of ideas towards expanding, towards broadening, web media tracks use cases for multimedia-enhanced web scenarios, the W3C Video in the Web Activity, and/or the Timed Text Working Group.




Kind regards,


Adam Sobieski