<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Ian Hickson <span dir="ltr"><ian@hixie.ch></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">> I might be missing something here, but:<br></div><div class="Ih2E3d">
> 1) I don't remember any major media system I've dealt with so far having<br>
> an explicit pixel aspect ratio override API,<br>
> 2) on the web, neither QT plug-in nor Flash have it,<br>
<br>
</div>That might explain the large number of videos on the Web that are rendered<br>
at the wrong ratio without anyone doing anything about it. :-)</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Or, perhaps, "authors don't care" or "the people who embed videos for playback without access to the original source files are unlikely to know much about getting aspect ratios correct, especially when it involves using confusing attributes that people are not supposed to use" might explain it. I'm not sure what data could be used to determine which hypothesis is accurate.</div>
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d">> 5) there's no _actual_ data that proves it's necessary (shouldn't the<br>
</div><div class="Ih2E3d">
> software or video web site fix the videos upfront?)<br>
<br>
</div>Anecdotally, I see this quite a lot (several times a week).</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Anecdotally, I never see this, and I watch a lot of video. YouTube's recent widescreen move has made me see a lot of boxed video, but that's not the same.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The plural of anecdote is not data. To repeat the question, what sorts of _data_ motivate this?</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">> Based on this, it seems to me this attribute should not be in the spec<br>
> by default, and we should switch the burden of the proof to people who<br>
> want it (rather than it being on people who don't want it as it seems to<br>
> be the case today), and finally wait to see 1) if there's a real need<br>
> for a solution here and 2) if the best solution is indeed a pixel aspect<br>
> ratio override.<br>
<br>
</div>I'm certainly open to other solutions. What do you suggest?</blockquote><div><br></div><div>From reading the above paragraph, "do nothing, for now". I don't see a problem in need of an HTML 5 spec solution.</div>
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d">On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Peter Kasting wrote:<br>> The potential for problems seems<br>
> greater than the upside from authors correctly using this to do<br>
> emergency-overrides of particular videos whose sources they don't<br>
> control.<br>
<br>
</div>I don't understand why this attribute would cause problems. Can you<br>
elaborate?</blockquote><div><br></div><div>* Authors specify the wrong ratio, causing videos to look worse</div><div>* Authors, blindly copy-and-pasting, believe this attribute is required and specify it everywhere, increasing the likelihood of both of these bullet points</div>
<div><br></div><div>If you think the likelihood of the first bullet is low, consider the confusion evident on this thread, and then extend that to authors who have even less of a clue. The attribute is confusing because your intended use -- as a hack that people shouldn't use -- is confusing.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Videos encoded at the wrong aspect ratio are a real problem, but they are one of an extremely large number of real problems, most of which we (rightly) are not trying to solve. I think you have given a few reasons why we _aren't_ trying to solve others. I don't understand why we're trying to solve this one.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I don't think it is the end of the world if this attribute goes in, but I see very little benefit to it, and I am always for removing items with marginal utility.</div><div><br></div><div>PK</div></div>