{Minutes} TTWG Teleconference 2024-04-25

Thanks all for attending today’s TTWG meeting. Minutes can be found in HTML format at https://www.w3.org/2024/04/25-tt-minutes.html


In plain text:

   [1]W3C

      [1] https://www.w3.org/


                Timed Text Working Group Teleconference

25 April 2024

   [2]Previous meeting. [3]Agenda. [4]IRC log.

      [2] https://www.w3.org/2024/04/11-tt-minutes.html

      [3] https://github.com/w3c/ttwg/issues/280

      [4] https://www.w3.org/2024/04/25-tt-irc


Attendees

   Present
          Andreas, Atsushi, Cyril, Matt, Nigel, Pierre

   Regrets
          Chris_Needham, Gary

   Chair
          Nigel

   Scribe
          nigel

Contents

    1. [5]This meeting
    2. [6]IMSC-HRM
    3. [7]DAPT
         1. [8]Add informative section about mapping from TTML to
            the DAPT data model w3c/dapt#216
    4. [9]AOB - Captioning industry event
    5. [10]AOB - UK regulator Ofcom's recent updates
    6. [11]Meeting close

Meeting minutes

  This meeting

   Nigel: Today's agenda:
   … * IMSC-HRM Rec publication
   … * DAPT agenda items
   … * AOB from Cyril about the recent live captioning industry
   event
   … * AOB from Nigel about the UK regulator Ofcom's updated
   Access Services Best Practice Guidelines
   … Anything else for the agenda?

   group: nothing else

  IMSC-HRM

   Nigel: Great news - as you'll have seen on emails, we published
   the Recommendation today.

   [12]IMSC-HRM Rec 2024-04-25

     [12] https://www.w3.org/TR/2024/REC-imsc-hrm-20240425/


   Nigel: Big thank you to everyone for contributing to this,
   … and special shout out to Pierre for Editing.

   Pierre: Thanks to Movielabs for supporting me in this.
   … I plan to publicise this early next week, let me know if you
   want to join in.
   … My experience when testing it is it's really useful for
   making sure that one's library
   … does not contain subtitle files with errors or that are too
   complex. Thanks everybody.

   Atsushi: Congratulations.

   Pierre: I'd like to note that at the end we had two
   implementations!
   … Thanks Nigel, I think that was good, we found a bunch of
   bugs.

   Nigel: It really validated the usual approach of having more
   than one implementation, that experience.
   … Pierre, I saw you merged [13]w3c/imsc-hrm#80 which closed
   [14]w3c/imsc-hrm#79, and published a release.

     [13] https://github.com/w3c/imsc-hrm/issues/80

     [14] https://github.com/w3c/imsc-hrm/issues/79


   [15]Rec release on GitHub

     [15] https://github.com/w3c/imsc-hrm/releases/tag/REC-imsc-hrm-20240425


   Nigel: Thank you for that. This concludes the work on this
   specification for the time being.

   Pierre: Indeed.

   Nigel: Which raises the question: what next?
   … When we began this refactoring process we said we wanted to
   remove the HRM text from the IMSC specifications.
   … That's the next question - do we go ahead and do that change
   on its own, or wait until there are other
   … substantive changes to make and then go ahead and do it
   together?

   Pierre: My preference is to wait.

   Nigel: That's fine for me - one thing that would change the
   picture would be if someone came to us
   … and said they wanted to reference IMSC-HRM separately in
   their requirements.

   Pierre: Yes, that would fall into the same category as any
   "can't live with it" issue in IMSC.
   … I will open an issue on IMSC to factor out the HRM so that we
   don't forget it.

   Nigel: Anything else to raise about IMSC-HRM?

   No other matters

  DAPT

   Nigel: We have one item on the agenda, but I also want to raise
   another point about ttm:role

    Add informative section about mapping from TTML to the DAPT data
    model [16]w3c/dapt#216

     [16] https://github.com/w3c/dapt/issues/216


   github: [17]w3c/dapt#216

     [17] https://github.com/w3c/dapt/pull/216


   Nigel: We discussed this last call and I began working on the
   edits to the pull request,
   … but then realised we hadn't concluded properly on something
   where two mutually exclusive views
   … had been presented.

   Nigel: [summarises [18]w3c/dapt#216 (comment) ]
   … From Cyril's response I think it's clear that for vocabulary
   in DAPT or TTML namespaces, or any
   … namespace included in the spec, processors should not write
   out vocabulary relating to features they don't support.
   … My next question is: what about stuff in completely different
   namespaces?
   … Like locally defined metadata.

     [18] https://github.com/w3c/dapt/pull/216#issuecomment-2072894545


   Pierre: Unless the spec defines a place in the model for
   metadata, with enough semantics that
   … the processor can do something with it without knowing its
   contents, the safest thing is for the processor
   … to prune them altogether.

   Nigel: Such a place might be as a child of the <metadata>
   element for example.

   Pierre: You might say that in head/metadata, temporally, any
   metadata applies to the whole document.
   … They might still put in some average word count, say, so a
   processor that doesn't know it could
   … update the document and invalidate it.
   … From a spec perspective it makes sense to prune all unknown
   vocabulary. It's the best approach.

   Cyril: A few points. I may have responded too quickly! I'm
   thinking about changing my mind.
   … With an MP4 file, if there are boxes I don't understand, do I
   expect a processor to remove them?
   … You would remove the declaration of the features not
   understood.
   … In TTML, you would definitely remove the contentProfiles that
   aren't supported.
   … Does it mean you have to remove everything?
   … You could remove it, but if you leave it in, then you're not
   claiming its validity.
   … The entity that would process the document could decide to
   keep, say, a word count element,
   … but would remove the contentProfiles declaration.
   … Secondly, when you rewrite a document, it's two steps:
   parsing and then writing.
   … What's the difference here? You could write valid documents
   against the specifications you declare validity for.
   … Option 1 was "MUST omit" - I think it is probably too strong.

   Andreas: I'm a bit reluctant if we recommend at all to prune
   unknown vocabulary especially in foreign namespaces,
   … because it could remove some benefits of extending TTML
   documents with data, especially metadata.
   … From the user point of view, what could you expect if foreign
   namespace metadata is in the document,
   … and it goes through an implementation not controlled by the
   user.
   … You could say it is implementation dependent, but in the best
   case it stays where it was before.
   … Then the user needs to live with the fact that it may not be
   meaningful any more.
   … If we recommend pruning, then metadata would only survive
   implementations that understand it.
   … I think that's too strong a requirement.

   Pierre: Just to clarify, I'm saying this strictly from a
   specification conformance perspective.
   … I expect implementations to do whatever.

   Cyril: What does it mean though, because if the implementation
   doesn't meet the spec then it's not compliant.

   Pierre: Say there's a presentation processor, pruning unknown
   vocabulary can be tested.
   … If you feed a presentation processor two documents, one with
   foreign vocab and one without, you
   … would expect the same outcome.
   … If there is a conformance for a translation or transport
   processor...

   Nigel: That's what we're talking about

   Pierre: From my experience in TTML and MXF, I've only seen pain
   in trying to keep around things that
   … you don't know what they are.
   … From a conformance standpoint it's either a MUST or nothing.

   Nigel: The point about contentProfiles was agreed, there was no
   doubt about that.
   … We are talking about a document that reads and writes DAPT
   documents, rather than a presentation processor.
   … A suggestion I have based on the above is as follows:
   … If there is any feature or vocabulary that has some semantic
   that means it could be invalidated by being
   … "passed through" then the definer of that vocabulary better
   make a profile for it and have that appear in
   … contentProfiles when output by a processor that supports it.
   … Other vocabulary that is just inside any metadata element can
   be passed through and no assumptions
   … about validity should be made.
   … I think we should prune any unsupported vocabulary in
   namespaces listed in DAPT though.
   … The third part is that a processor that does support some
   extra profile and receives a document that
   … doesn't claim conformance to that profile but does contain
   vocabulary relating to it needs to take extra
   … validation steps and may need to modify it.
   … That last point is hard to write a testable specification
   conformance rule for.

   Nigel: Does that make any sense?

   Cyril: What can we say about the definer of vocabulary making a
   profile?

   Nigel: We can make a note recommending that people do this.

   Cyril: That's fine.

   Andreas: I think at least the first two options seem fine to
   me, but they're more recommendations
   … to the author than the processor, right?

   Nigel: From this I can define processor behaviour, as follows:
   … 1. Never include in ttp:contentProfile profiles which the
   processor does not support.
   … 2. Foreign namespace vocabulary in <metadata> elements should
   be preserved
   … 3. Non-foreign namespace vocabulary that is not supported
   MUST be removed
   … And then there's advice too, for authors as you suggest.

   Andreas: Yes I think those are processor requirements.

   Pierre: Number 2 is not testable because of the SHOULD.
   … By the way, I think that's what will happen in practice, but
   from a spec perspective it is not testable.

   Andreas: I think that it's implementation dependent, what
   happens, but whatever keyword you use
   … it is a recommendation to keep where possible. In some cases
   it may not be possible,
   … because a semantically identical document has its structure
   changed, and the parent of the metadata element
   … was removed while doing that.

   Nigel: That last point is a whole other headache - I think with
   DAPT it should not happen but I guess it is possible.

   Pierre: The only alternative I can think of is to preserve
   vocabulary but if you put it in a particular
   … location then it has limited impact. It's going to be fragile
   I think.

   Nigel: There's a good test case there for us to think about
   which is what if you take a DAPT document
   … and add styling in to make it an IMSC document.

   Cyril: I was thinking the same thing.
   … I'm wondering if, once you start making a subtitle out of a
   DAPT document, you've forked it and you're
   … in the subtitling space - I'm not sure you'd want to go back
   to the DAPT processor for anything.
   … It's a one-way door I would say.

   Pierre: One thing just occurred: does the spec really need to
   define a transformation processor?

   Nigel: Validation processors are a subset of transformation
   processors.

   Pierre: Just for validation it's okay to prune everything
   that's unknown.
   … Maybe just don't define transformation processor other than
   validation processor so we don't need this?

   Nigel: That's where I started out when we began thinking about
   this.

   Nigel: I think I have enough to go ahead and try editing here,
   and see how that works out.

   SUMMARY: @nigelmegitt to attempt to edit this into the pull
   request; everyone else to think about the semantics for
   including TTML styling vocabulary.

  AOB - Captioning industry event

   Cyril: Three of us, Pierre, myself and Andreas were there.
   … There will be a report posted soon, summarising what
   happened.
   … The gist of it is that it was a very successful event, with a
   lot of people attending
   … from various parts of the industry, from studios to caption
   vendors to universities - very broad.
   … There will be follow-ups I think, possibly in Europe so
   others can have a chance to attend.
   … The outcome is probably that at least for live streaming the
   technologies we have in place are not
   … sufficient to address a global market, Asia, Europe, US.
   … It's probably not a lack of standards, more a lack of
   guidelines and good practices.
   … There was a strong support for TTML in the room, people
   saying TTML could solve all of it.
   … That's my quick summary.

   Pierre: I'm about to start writing the report so I'll withhold
   my final opinion!
   … Something that struck me was an intense desire in the room to
   do more interop testing.
   … From a high level user/ecosystem standpoint there's a
   perception that there isn't enough interop testing being done.
   … What's fed at one end of the chain comes out very different
   at the other end.
   … The strongest immediate desire in the room, among other
   things, was to make progress with interop.

   Andreas: One main outcome was everyone was interested in
   following up and keeping the community,
   … finding a forum to collaborate and work on these issues.

   Cyril: Maybe for another time, we should think about how this
   working group can get more feedback
   … on its activities.

   Pierre: Thinking out loud, many folk who attended would never
   attend TTWG because it's down in the details
   … for them - that's a good thing! There might need to be a
   higher level forum where operational and practical
   … issues are discussed. I think there was agreement that the
   core standards exist, but it's how to use them
   … that generated the friction.
   … Ultimately how the industry works with this group is super
   important I think.

   Nigel: Thank you for the great summary, and for telling us
   about this.

  AOB - UK regulator Ofcom's recent updates

   [19]Ofcom news article

     [19] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2024/ensuring-the-quality-of-tv-and-on-demand-access-services


   Nigel: Quick AOB - the UK regulator Ofcom updated its Access
   Services Code (the requirements) and
   … the associated Best Practice Guidelines.
   … The goal of the work I think is to pave the way for UK
   regulation of the accessibility of video media, whether
   … on broadcast or online.
   … There's a UK government bill in progress which will bring big
   streamers into regulatory control, for example,
   … and Ofcom will have to do that.

   Nigel: If the UK's approach is of interest, it's worth checking
   out that page and following the links.

  Meeting close

   Nigel: Thanks everyone, next meeting in 2 weeks as usual.
   [adjourns meeting]


    Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by
    [20]scribe.perl version 221 (Fri Jul 21 14:01:30 2023 UTC).

     [20] https://w3c.github.io/scribe2/scribedoc.html

Received on Thursday, 25 April 2024 16:17:18 UTC