[whatwg] Start position of media resources

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Apr 2009, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>> Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>> > Note that in the Media Fragment working group even the specification
>> > of http://www.example.com/t.mov#time="10s-20s" may mean that only the
>> > requested 10s clip is delivered
>>
>> Since the part starting with '#' isn't sent as part of the HTTP GET request,
>> I'm not sure how this is envisioned to work.
>>
>> Is there a change to HTTP planned here?
>
> Presumably one would use byte range requests as if the user had just
> seeked to the given time.

If a mapping between time and byte ranges is available, that is
possible. For most formats, that is however not the case. Therefore
there will be new time range requests that will be converted to byte
ranges on the server or a clever proxy.

> Ideally most videos wouldn't be sent using HTTP but using a more
> appropriate protocol that is designed for sending video; such protocols
> might have dedicated ways of jumping to particular times.

Most videos nowadays are sent using HTTP - in particular YouTube
videos. But we (in the media fragments WG) do indeed include RTP/RTSP
as another protocol that already includes mechanisms for requesting
time fragments.

Cheers,
Silvia.