[whatwg] video tag : loop for ever

WeBMartians webmartians at verizon.net
Thu Oct 16 06:16:56 PDT 2008


...not sure if the following has been noted; if so, apologies...

Currently, animated GIF and MNG images are used, sometimes, in "loop forever" form. Assuming that video might be used in an
analogous fashion, loop-forever should be supported.

I shudder to think about looping audio, however. Animated GIFs are often called "dancing baloney" ... and looping audio would be...?

A-GIF and MNG do not support sub-clips ... and that's for a good reason: even as primitive as they are, GIF and MNG do offer a level
of compression and jumping to some arbitrary or near-arbitrary spot in the clip is very difficult. As a counterpoint, jumps are
supported by the various <embed> and <video> engines ... and can be completely screwed up if the content does not follow best
practices, such as frequent full-frame resets.

Using Javascript to estimate duration and thereby control the playback of WAV, MP3 or Ogg files has been done, but may not be
feasible due to difficulties in determining load completion (onload), inaccuracy in the handling of timer events, and difficulties
in skipping over unwanted content. Currently, the best practice is to have discrete content in order to avoid jumps.




More information about the whatwg mailing list