[whatwg] Quality Values for Media Source Elements

[Nils Dagsson Moskopp]

Hugh Guiney <hugh.guiney at gmail.com> schrieb am Sat, 12 Dec 2009
21:32:30 -0500:

> Hey all,

Hey,

> Ideally, I would like to be able to simply encode a few different
> quality variations of the same file and serve each version to its
> corresponding audience.

The <source> element was invented for this.

> There are a few ways I could do this. One of the most obvious ways
> would be to present different versions of the site, e.g. one for "slow
> connections" and one for "fast connections" and have the user pick via
> a splash page before entering, as was popular in '90s. But this is
> almost certainly a faux pas today: it puts a wall between the user and
> my content, and requires me to maintain two different versions of the
> site. Hardly efficient.

This is correct. You don't prompt users for different resolutions
either nowadays.

> If HTML video is to compete with Flash, or become implemented on as
> wide a scale as YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/html5>, it makes sense
> to allow for some sort of quality choice mechanism, as users will have
> come to expect that functionality.

What about a simple drop-down beside an embedded media resource ?

> This could be done by allowing an attribute on <source> elements that
> takes a relative value, such as (or similar to) those specified in
> HTTP <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html#sec3.9>.
> This attribute could be called "quality" or "qvalue" or just "q" (my
> personal preference would be it that order decreasing), and be used as
> such:

Specifying a bit rate would be vastly more appropriate IMO.


Cheers,
-- 
Nils Dagsson Moskopp // erlehmann
<http://dieweltistgarnichtso.net>
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