[whatwg] <video> element proposal

[Gervase Markham]

Spartanicus wrote:
> Another current common frustration amongst authors is how to get file
> based media files to play before they've been fully downloaded. This is
> currently achieved by using text based redirector files containing the
> url to the actual media file, but these redirector formats have only
> been defined for a limited number of media formats. That would suggest
> that a UA could by default employ progressive downloading.

I was thinking about this the other day. There seems to be no way of 
distinguishing the case where you want to hand the data from a URL to an 
external program (e.g. Word files), and you want to hand the URL itself 
to an external program (e.g. streaming audio).

Not sure if a solution to this is in scope for WHAT-WG...

> Currently an issue with supplying height and width for video content
> embedded with the object element is that the supplied width and height
> includes the chrome and UI controls of the embedded player. That creates
> problems for authors who often don't know the size of those elements in
> advance, it may depend on the player and/or player skin they use.
> Scaling video can be very GPU intensive, so it would be helpful if there
> was a way to ensure that video can play in it's native size, whilst at
> the same time knowing in advance what room to reserve in the flow for
> the media and any player chrome.

That's the equivalent of:

yvideo + ygui = ytotal

where yvideo is defined in advance by the video file, and ytotal needs 
to be known in advance. The only way that's possible is for ygui to be 
fixed across all platforms etc.

Gerv