[whatwg] Video source selection based on quality (was: <video> feedback)

[Tim Hutt]

On 17 February 2010 03:05, Conrad Parker <conrad at metadecks.org> wrote:
>> My point exactly. There is no single 'quality' metric, so the best we
>> can do is give the user agent the relevant information and let it
>> decide.
>
> Perhaps, but why are you suggesting that HTML is the correct place to
> offer that information?
>
> For handling bitrate selection (and bitrate adaptation) I think it's
> more useful to provide a resource description file, under control of
> the video host, as the video source URL.

Good point. You mean something like a .ram file? I think both
techniques should be supported -- a metadata file is extra hassle to
set up if you /are/ the HTML and video author, and it involves an
extra file download which will slow things down.

Maybe something like:

<video src="many_files.sources">

Which is equivalent to

<video>
[the contents of many_files.sources (which optionally contains bitrate
and resolution tags)]
</video>

Obviously this shouldn't be implemented like #include because that
would be insecure. Instead the UA would parse the file and make sure
it only contained <source> tags.