[whatwg] Can AUDIO/VIDEO element have a "balance" attribute

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2008, Biju Gm at il wrote:
> 
> We need a balance property for AUDIO/VIDEO which can be accessed thru 
> javascript
> 
> Example:-
> In http://www.fishtank.me/ if we have the balance property we can give
> an audible effect of bubble being appearing at different sides of the
> screen. With out the balance property to give the similar effect, one
> have to create sound files with different balance at server and bring
> it to the client, which will be a waste of band width.

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008, Biju Gm at il wrote:
> 
> It can be educational or game sites for kids.
> 
> Like
> http://www.starfall.com/
> http://pbskids.org/
> 
> Some where at these sites I saw a flash tool to build music.
> So having control on balance can enhance a music composing training page..
> 
> One of thing a blind person cant do is using mouse on computer.
> Because mouse need feed back through eye to use it.
> (unlike old technologies like Digitizer Stylus, Light Pen etc)
> 
> I have a little ambitious idea,
> We can help blind person to use mouse if we have ability to control
> balance and volume.
> 
> ie,
> * 1 audio source and balance can give left and right position on screen.
> * 2 audio source, one to indicate top and other for bottom along with
> balance and volume control can give 2D positioning on screen.
> 
> And 3 audio source, third one for depth can give 3D positioning. Which
> solves the zooming effect on google map.

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
>
> While I don't strongly object to the suggestion as such, there are 2 
> things I want to point out.
> 
> 1. It is not clear (to me at least) what balance means for anything by 
> mono/stereo audio. What is the expected behaviour for 5.1 audio?
> 
> 2. Balance is just one kind of audio filter effect. The more "filter" 
> features are added the tougher the requirements on the user agent and 
> the media framework backend they use will be.
> 
> Is there a use case for having the same LARGE media file played back 
> with different balance settings? All the obvious use cases would be 
> short sound effects where creating duplicate versions of the files might 
> be a better trade-off than introducing more complexity in the API.

I think that this is the kind of thing we will want to expose in the 
future, especially, e.g., in conjunction with a 3D Canvas API.

I've noted this as a feature we will want to add in a future version of 
the <audio> API, but I don't think we should add it yet since we're still 
waiting for the browser vendors to ship a solid implementation of the API 
as it stands today.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'