[foms] Just Arrived

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Steve Lhomme <slhomme at matroska.org> wrote:
> By the way, were there considerations on patents on this ? For
> example, did Apple patent any of their technique of cutting chunks or
> maybe on the encoder side.

We had a discussion about this - see the thread at
http://lists.annodex.net/cgi-bin/mailman/private/foms/2010-October/000764.html
. I have asked Apple directly about the patent situation, but never
really got a clear answer. I assume there may be defensive patents.
Apple is actively contributing to the DASH effort of MPEG, which seems
to have a clear aim to be unencumbered.


> Also is javascript a requirement for this ? Or just pointing to a
> proper URL would be enough for the browser to know it's adaptative and
> handle it silently ?

Ultimately it will be the simplest solution for publishers to just
plug a URL to a manifest file into the @src attribute of the <video>
element, just like Apple already do for the m3u8 files and support it
in Safari. But it is a rather big change to HTML5 and a big
implementation task for the browser vendors and it is not clear yet
what would be the best approach, since all the handling around such a
file format as well as the file format itself need to be standardized.
Therefore, the first step towards this is through JavaScript. Also, it
will be important to have both options such that a Web developer can
adapt the adaptive HTTP streaming approach to their needs.

Cheers,
Silvia.