[whatwg] <video> element proposal

[Henri Sivonen]

On Mar 1, 2007, at 08:26, Lachlan Hunt wrote:

> The browser could send along the list of supported MIME types in  
> it's accept header for video formats, like:
>
> Accept: application/ogg, video/mpeg, video/mp4, application/mp4,  
> video/quicktime, */*;q=0.1

Content negotiation is like a box of chocolates. You never know what  
you are going to GET. :-)

The problem in this case is that the media types map roughly to the  
container formats. However, the codecs are what really count. For  
example, MPEG-4 Simple Profile, MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile and H. 
264 all live in the video/mp4 container. However, support for these  
codecs and their zillion subprofiles varies. (Yet another example why  
optional profiles in spec are bad for interop. The profiling of the  
MPEG-4 video stuff is worse than any Web spec "Mobile Profile".)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/