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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Tim Hutt <tdhutt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.


But what happens when you need some custom UI to switch among
sources... Or what about camera angles, languages, or any of the other
logically connected things you'd like to bundle together as a single
"video object"?  Special logic for handling non-HTML5 video fallbacks?
Logic for nearest-mirror selection? Advertising?


All this can be solved by using object/embed to embed a player pagelet
into your pages, it also works across sites.

Why is special case handling for just selecting among multiple rates
interesting or important?