[whatwg] Codecs for <audio> and <video>

Charles Pritchard chuck at jumis.com
Tue Jul 7 08:52:29 PDT 2009


Philip Jagenstedt wrote:
> For all of the simpler use cases you can already generate sounds 
> yourself with a data uri. For example, with is 2 samples of silence: 
> "data:audio/wav;base64,UklGRigAAABXQVZFZm10IBAAAAABAAEARKwAAIhYAQACABAAZGF0YQQAAAAAAAAA". 
>
Yes you can use this method, and with the current audio tag and 
autobuffer, it may work to some degree.

We've used the data:audio/midi technique, and we've experimented with 
audio/wav,
using the data: injection work-around, does not currently work all that 
well.

It does not produce smooth transitions. We can use raw encoding instead 
of base64 to save on
cpu cycles, but it's still quite "hackish".
>
> It might be worthwhile implementing the API you want as a JavaScript 
> library and see if you can actually do useful things with it. If the 
> use cases are compelling and require native browser support to be 
> performant enough, perhaps it could go into a future version of HTML.
>
Overall, we can not make near-real-time effects, nor jitter-free 
compositions.

We've used wav and midi in a JavaScript library, using the data: url 
technique.
The data: injection technique is inefficient, it's not workable.

Opera has been championing Xiph codecs on this list, There are 
ActionScript and Java Vorbis-players developed using the most basic of APIs.
Isn't that use-case compelling enough?


-Charles



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