[whatwg] Some <video> questions

[Charles]

Maciej,

> Actually, many QuickTime codec plugins are quite popular...

I guess "popular" is relative.  The installed base of the most popular set
of 3rd-party QuickTime components (Flip4Mac WM) is miniscule compared to
Linux installed base, and is closer to 5,000 than 50,000.

> Flash isn't a video codec, there's no such thing as encoding video
> "as Flash".

I'll gladly rephrase as "using compressed media formats supported by the
version of Flash one is targeting, to a container format supported by the
version of Flash one is targeting, intended for playback using the targeted
version of the Flash runtime" if that helps.

> Flash is not a video format.

Thanks, I have a good understanding of what Flash is.   :^)

> Here's some interesting MPEG content served without flash wrappers:
<http://www.apple.com/trailers/>

No, those are QuickTime Movies that happen to use MPEG-4 codecs.  They're
not MPEG-4 files.

So, my questions remain.  What I'm hearing is that (1) <video> will only be
a cross-browser, cross-platform solution for exactly one format -- that
freely implementable and royalty free combination of container and
compressed video and audio formats -- and that (2) from a design perspective
<video> transport controls may be any size (or no size at all if the browser
vendor prefers overlays), requiring designers to roll their own if they need
controls to be a predictable size.

Am I crazy, or is there an opportunity to fix this before <video> joins
<blink>?   :O)

--- Charles