[Xiph-Advocacy] Need of captioning for HTML5 video

[Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves]

On 9/19/07, Maik Merten <maikmerten at gmx.net> wrote:
> No, it's not stated that Skeleton does just that, but I guess it's
> helping implementing that kind of stuff.

Skeleton is really powerful.  Using it on .ogx is highly recommended,
because .ogx and Skeleton were just made for each other.

I'll quote Silvia here:
"Imagine measurements of the acidicity of
a pond over time, where there's a measurement taken once every hour.
Or measurements of a laser or pyrotechnical experiment. Such data can
also be included inside an Ogg and then make use of the other types of
logical bitstreams that we have created for Ogg (such as CMML).

Also imagine a file that has 4 different video streams and 8 different
audio streams multiplexed into each other together with geospatial
information tracks, CMML and other stuff. This is a random multitrack
file, that doesn't clearly fall into the "video" or "audio"
specification, since it goes beyond what we typically understand by a
"video" file (i.e. one video track and 1 audio track)."

Cool stuff.  And Skeleton helps making order of all that.  The gist of
it for this discussion, though, is that Skeleton does not provide
captioning; it just tells applications that a captioning codec is
there and how to use it appropriately.

> That sounds like a plan.

Don't worry.  I'm from the Internet.

I'm already looking into subtitle formats that are under a free
license and/or patent-free.  While ASS is the best format for
captioning that I know of, it's licensing is highly non-existant
(read: proprietary, but the makers don't care).  We don't want for the
browsers to support something like that, though.

So, either we find a free captioning format, or we convince the ASS
developers to release the format under a free license.  Then, we'll
also have to make sure there are no software patents on captioning,
which is doubtful since everything under the bloody Sun seems to be
patented.  Bloody patent vultures.  Expired patents are useful to our
cause, though.

I'll try to get in touch with the ASS developers, but I'm afraid it
will end up with us having to resurrect Writ and actually make
something good out of it (read: not gonna happen).  This is
problematic, and we need to find a solution quickly.

-Ivo