[whatwg] Html 5 video element's poster attribute

[Shiv Kumar]

Rob,

 

>I don't see why providing a scriptable API to hide the poster image is better than just having authors use existing APIs to clear the poster attribute.

What is the existing API to clear and show the poster?

 

>They are not designed to be independent. If you want them to be independent, use a real independent image placed over the video.

Rob, with all due respect, you seem to have not read the earlier parts of this conversation. I may be wrong and I don’t mean to rub anyone the wrong way here.

 

As it stands today, the poster is not usable (probably because as you state it has not been designed to be independent). Every website that has implemented their own Html 5 video player have had to hack their way to get things to work the way they’d expect. I explained this part in my first post. Basically ,what they do is assign the poster and not the source. Then when the user clicks play, they assign the source. Then each time the user skips ahead, they need to null out the poster attribute (otherwise in some browsers the poster flashes during buffering periods) and then set the currentTime to skip ahead. Now if you want to change the source of the video in mid play to a better or lower quality version of the same video then you have to go through a few more hoops (and the load() method is used at this time – but you don’t want the poster to show either).

 

I think we have a consensus on the need to change the way the poster behaves. 

1.       The poster should remain visible till the video is played.

2.       Once the video has been played, the poster should not show during buffering  or skipping ahead or any other action.

 

The only thing that remains then is if web developers would like control over the poster, such as to show the poster after the video has ended, then there should be a way to do that. For this we need a method to show the poster once again. Current there is no way to get the poster to show again and the load() method is not the answer, nor is resetting. A simple method that does not impact anything else will do the trick.  

 

Shiv

 <http://exposureroom.com/> http://exposureroom.com

 

From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org [mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Robert O'Callahan
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 9:47 PM
To: Shiv Kumar
Cc: Silvia Pfeiffer; whatwg at lists.whatwg.org; Chris Pearce
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Html 5 video element's poster attribute

 

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Shiv Kumar <skumar at exposureroom.com> wrote:

Of course we wouldn’t want the user to see the poster during the time it takes to switch so we clear value of the poster before doing this, which is one of the issues cited in my very first post on this subject.


I don't see why providing a scriptable API to hide the poster image is better than just having authors use existing APIs to clear the poster attribute.

In my mind, “load()” does not imply that the poster should also show. The video stream and poster are quite frankly independent of each other. One is a video stream and the other is an image.


They are not designed to be independent. If you want them to be independent, use a real independent image placed over the video.

Rob


-- 
"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." [Acts 17:11]

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