Timed Text action proposition [was: Re: Timed Text work]

Neil,

First comes the need:  Caption producers presently have to produce into
multiple formats in parallel because the players that their captions wind up in
support three different proprietary formats and there are too many players that
don't play anything but one that they like to leave any of the three out.  This
is a bear, as the caption producers will gladly tell you.

Next comes the opportunity:  In preliminary discussions to date, the holders of
the IP rights in the formats we are most aware of have all supported the notion
that this stuff is a commodity, not a market lever; and the industry is ripe
for a neutral format that all play and produce.  We are provisionally
proceeding on that premise.

Third, the technical strategy for problem attack:  As to why it takes a Working
Group producing a new language specification, Aaron Cohen said it better than I
can.

-- quote,
cite="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tt-tf/2002Jan/0010.html"

To me, this winds up being a pretty good reason for defining a TT language
spec, even given the requirement that we use as much pre-existing markup (in
the form of modules) as possible. Right now, there is no specification that
integrates the appropriate modules together into a document type. Since the
document type will likely be related to, but distinct from XHTML, SMIL, and
SVG, we'll have to create our own.

-- end quote

This doesn't mean that we can answer _just_ what we're up to, here.  There is
residual uncertainty about the precise boundaries of the capability that will
be created.  The real-time vs. canned-content scenario-comparison has yet to be
worked systematically; there are uncertainties as to how much presentational
paraphenalia to equip this language with, etc.  We are trying to set up a work
process that will provide for a progressive elimination of uncertainties about
what the notional format will do and how.    But the _centering_ of the "action
proposition," and the basic raison d'etre, the reasoning why we feel "yes,
taking an action of this general nature is something to do" are roughly as
recapitulated above.

HTH

Al

At 04:29 AM 2002-01-24 , Philipp Hoschka wrote:
>(adding www-tt-tf to the thread)
>
>Neil,
>
>The general idea is to discuss whether W3C should work on an 
>XML-based format for "timed text", i.e. subtitles, captioning 
>etc., and what should be done.
>
>For more info, see the message I forwarded
><http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-smil/2002JanMar/0007.html>http://
lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-smil/2002JanMar/0007.html
>
>You can find an initial list of requirements here
><http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/timetext.html>http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/t
imetext.html
>
>Hope this helps
>
>-Philipp
>
>Neil Carson wrote:
>> 
>> Can you give some background on what you're up to here for the uninitiated
>> soles like myself :-)
>> 
>>     Thanks,
>> 
>>     Neil
>> 
>> > I think this is of interest to the TV community. We'd be especially
>> > interested if you could send pointers to already existing efforts in
>> > that space to www-tt-tf@w3.org
>

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2002 10:36:52 UTC