[whatwg] Video with MIME type application/octet-stream

[Roger Hågensen]

  On 2010-09-11 03:40, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
[snip...]
>
>     And yeah, this kinda stretched beyond the scope of HTML5 specs,
>     but you'd be swatting two flies at once, solving the sniffing
>     issue with <video> and <audio>, but also the sniffing issue that
>     every OS has had for the last couple of um... decades?! (poke your
>     OS/Filesystem colleagues and ask them what they think of something
>     like this.)
>     Then again, HTML5 is kinda a OS in it's own right, being a app
>     platform (not to mention supporting local storage of databases and
>     files even), so maybe it's not that far outside the scope anyway
>     to define something like this?
>
>     -- 
>     Roger "Rescator" Hågensen.
>     Freelancer - http://EmSai.net/
>
>
>
> Is there a link to your BINID proposal? From reading this I wonder: 
> Would it entail having to re-write all existing files with an extra 
> identifier at the start?
>
> Silvia.
>

http://www.emsai.net/projects/binid/details/
(it really need to be rewritten as it's way to wordy and repetitive to 
explain something so simple, I was planning to rewrite the document 
later this fall but...)

And to answer your question, unfortunately yes, but that is the only way 
to solve the issue.
Some current fileformats would allow such a binary id header to be added 
without any issues (as they scan past ID3v2 or similar meta information 
anyway).
Most existing software would have no issues adding a check for such a 
binary id, in the long run it will save CPU cycles also.
Certain streaming/transfer protocols could be updated too, and this is 
where <video> and <audio> could leap ahead.

The thing is as I said, is that a browser could easily strip off the 
binary id before passing it on, so a codec or a OS filesystem or local 
software would be completely unaware,
but in time they too would support it (hopefully).
A serverside script (PHP or Python for example) could easily add the 
binary id to the start of a file or stream when sent to the browser, or 
even added to the file during transcoding.
so even if the server or .htaccess is set to only 
application/octet-stream proper file format identification would be 
still possible by browser only checking the binary id header.

-- 
Roger "Rescator" Hågensen.
Freelancer - http://EmSai.net/

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