[whatwg] video tag: pixel aspect ratio

Peter Kasting pkasting at google.com
Mon Nov 17 14:02:19 PST 2008


On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Pierre-Olivier Latour <pol at apple.com>wrote:
>
> 1) I don't remember any major media system I've dealt with so far having an
> explicit pixel aspect ratio override API,
> 2) on the web, neither QT plug-in nor Flash have it,
> 3) in the case of this spec, the way it's defined makes it behave
> incorrectly
> 4) it's not straightforward to use (see very first reply above)
> 5) there's no _actual_ data that proves it's necessary (shouldn't the
> software or video web site fix the videos upfront?)
>
> Based on this, it seems to me this attribute should not be in the spec by
> default, and we should switch the burden of the proof to people who want it
> (rather than it being on people who don't want it as it seems to be the case
> today), and finally wait to see 1) if there's a real need for a solution
> here and 2) if the best solution is indeed a pixel aspect ratio override.
>

I agree.  The more this attribute is discussed, the more "this is a hack
that no one should actually use" starts to sound like "we shouldn't put this
in the spec to begin with".  The potential for problems seems greater than
the upside from authors correctly using this to do emergency-overrides of
particular videos whose sources they don't control.

PK
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