- From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:08:56 -0500
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Tim Hutt <tdhutt at gmail.com> wrote: [snip] > It's up the UA. It can ping the server if it wants. If I were writing > the UI for firefox, for example I would have it do the following: [snip] > 3. If the default isn't the highest quality, show a little "Better > quality available" tooltip similar to youtube's "Watch in HD". > 4. If the video stutters a lot, and there is a lower quality video > available, display a (non-modal) message along the lines of "Lower > quality video is available, it may work better." Imagine that you are a user-agent. Place these streams in order of "quality": 1. 854x480 4:2:0 @ 1mbit/sec. average rate. 2. 1280x720 4:2:0 @ 1mbit/sec. average rate. 3. 640x360 4:4:4 @ 2mbit/sec. average rate. Or these: 1. 640x360 4:2:0 @ 1mbit/sec. average rate peaking to 1.4mbit/sec (over 64 frames). 2. 640x360 4:2:0 @ 0.7mbit/sec. average rate peaking to 8mbit/sec (over 64 frames). Or: 1. 640x360 "simple profile" @ 800kbit/sec average 2. 640x360 "super-ultra mega profile requiring a water-cooled supercomputer to decode" @ 700kbit/sec average. I don't think it's hard to imagine that in each of these cases there exists a real "quality" ranking which the creator of the videos could be well aware of, but that no user-agent could determine automatically. Moreover, even the "switch to a lower rate if you are exhausting your buffer" isn't a necessary a good strategy when the 'lower rate' stream is one which places more buffer pressure.
Received on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 08:08:56 UTC