At 21:33 +1300 9/12/08, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
For what it's worth, loading an intermediate document of some new
type which references other streams to be loaded adds a lot of
complexity to the browser implementation. It creates new states that
the decoder can be in, and introduces new failure modes. It creates
new timing issues and possibly new security issues.
I'm not sure I agree; but if you believe that, we should address it
no matter which way this discussion goes. It should absolutely be
possible to reference a SMIL file, or an MP4 or MOV file with
external data (to give only two examples) from a <video> or <audio>
element, and have the DOM, events, states, and APis work correctly.
Also, I should say that we quite deliberately left off associating
and synchronizing media from our initial proposal for the media
elements, for two reasons:
a) we believe that SMIL files should be embeddable;
b) it's an easy line to draw; you want media integration, use a
media integration language such as SMIL. If you start adding some
integration, it's very hard to know where to stop.
As for user or user-agent supplied subtitles etc., that can (of
course) be a UA feature or option. If a unique content ID would help
find such subtitle files, then I am hoping that the media annotations
group would come up with a workable scheme (something the music
industry is still, ahem, struggling with).
--
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.
