[whatwg] need a way to set output format from StreamRecorder

[Nils Dagsson Moskopp]

Kevin Marks <kevinmarks at gmail.com> schrieb am Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:33:13
-0800:

> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> 
> > […]
> >
> > I haven't added anything here yet, mostly because I've no idea what
> > to add. The ideal situation here is that we have one codec that
> > everyone can read and write and so don't need anything, but that
> > may be hopelessly optimistic.
> 
> 
> That isn't the ideal, as it locks us into the current state of the art
> forever. The ideal is to enable multiple codecs +formats that can be
> swapped out over time.

Yeah, because that really worked well with <object>, the generic
container element. Only it didn't, and with today's media elements
people are venting stuff like “I had to encode all my sound files in
Ogg Vorbis and MP3, just because of you, Safari. You make my life
unnecessarily difficult.”

— <http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2010/09/biolab-disaster>

As someone who sometimes produces audio (and may want to use of
browser-provided facilities, once they become available), I may have a
reasonable interest in interoperability between browsers.

(The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that codec hell is a real
place where your web application will be sent at the first sign of
defiance.)

On further thought, “state of the art lock-in” may not be as bad as you
might fear: First, bandwidth and storage space are becoming cheaper
over time; second, there is something as “good enough”, GZIP / DEFLATE
or MP3 being such examples that serve us for over 15 years each — even
though better specifications (Vorbis, 7z) clearly exist.

Even CPIO is used by my modern desktop system and that was defined
around the mid-80ies (or so Wikipedia tells me, I certainly wasn't
released at that point).


Cheers,
-- 
Nils Dagsson Moskopp // erlehmann
<http://dieweltistgarnichtso.net>