[whatwg] <video> application/octet-stream

[Mike Shaver]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Philip Jägenstedt <philipj at opera.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:15:18 +0200, Mike Shaver <mike.shaver at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Could you be more specific about the incorrect information?  My
>> understanding, from this thread and elsewhere, is that video formats
>> are reliably sniffable, and furthermore that the appropriate MIME type
>> for ogg-with-VP8 vs ogg-with-theora isn't clear (or possibly even
>> extant).  It seems like reliance on MIME type will result in more of
>> the guessing-and-stupid-switches than sniffing.
>
> The MIME type for both of those would be video/ogg. It wouldn't be hard or
> very error-prone to use only the MIME type, Firefox already does that. It's
> also not very hard to rely on sniffing, which all the other browsers do,
> although Opera still checks the MIME type first.

Indeed, so it seems that sniffing is always required, unless we expect
reliable use of the "codecs" parameter to become widespread.  (I
confess that I do not expect this, even if this group and the W3C
exhort authors to do so.)

> * Configuring the MIME type is an extra step that seemingly many authors
> don't know that they need. That it is easy to configure doesn't really help.

It may or may not be easy to configure the MIME type correctly, if we
are to include codec details.

> * Ignoring the MIME type will lead to more videos served as text/plain,
> which will render as huge amounts of garbage text in current browsers if
> opened directly (i.e. in a top-level browsing context).

Ignoring the MIME type *and* not sniffing those cases, you mean?

Mike