- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 21:43:51 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Francis Boumphrey <boumphreyfr@gmail.com>
- Cc: whatwg@lists.whatwg.org
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012, Francis Boumphrey wrote: > > A few comments about the <video> element from the point of view of an > HTML author. Currently it is not particularly useful, and there is > nothing to encourage me to use it rather than <embed> > > Firstly if I use a video with the src attribute > > e.g. <video src='myvideo.mp4' controls> > > and my user agent does not support the format, all I get (in my versions > of Opera and Firefox) is a blank screen. No message (as I would get with > <embed>) and as far as I can see there is no way for me as an author to > know that the video is not being played so I cannot code a 'write > around'. Right, the spec is written with the assumption that we will eventually have a single standard codec. > The option is to make several formats of the same video, e.g. > myvideo.mp3, myvideo.mp4, myvideo.ogg etc. and place them in child > <source> elements in the hope that one of the formats will be displayed. > > Even here I have a problem. In which order does the user-agent check the > source files (in Chrome it seems to be in the order in which they are > written, but there is no guidance here in the spec. The exact algorithm is described in detail. Essentially it's source order, yes. > Also will my user agent down-load the file that it cannot play, thus > using up band-width? Enough of it to determine it cannot play it, yes, unless you provide attributes on <source> for it to determine that it doesn't know the format. Cheers, -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Tuesday, 5 June 2012 21:44:21 UTC