Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

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Progress towards enabling audio/video conferencing on the Web

October 28, 2011

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group published the first public Working Draft of WebRTC 1.0: Real-Time Communications Between Browsers yesterday. This publication marks the first milestone to enable audio/video conferencing on the Web.

This work is a joint effort between the W3C WebRTC working group, responsible for the API, and the IETF RTCWEB group, responsible for the protocols. The API described in this first public working draft is incomplete — description of the data channel is missing for instance — and subject to major changes based on the outcome of the (quite lively!) ongoing discussions in both groups.

The W3C WebRTC Working Group will hold its second face-to-face meeting next week during W3C TPAC in Santa Clara, USA. It expects to make progress on privacy and security issues, as well as on finding the right balance between a low-level approach (that would enable interested parties to tweak potentially complex system parameters) and a higher-level API (that Web developers could use without a priori technical knowledge about real-time communications).

The design of the API is based on WebRTC use cases and requirements. We’d like to encourage you to review this document and the first draft of the WebRTC API and to provide feedback to the group on the public-webrtc@w3.org mailing-list (with public archives).

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New training course on HTML5 Audio & Video

September 27, 2011

We are pleased to announce the launch of a brand new W3C online training course dedicated to “HTML5 Audio and Video”. The objective of this course is to make students familiar enough with HTML5 media so that they can use and manipulate it in their Web pages and applications.

Students will learn:

  • about the current state of HTML5 audio and video
  • how to integrate HTML5 media into their Web pages
  • how to encode media to make it suitable for the Web
  • how to build and customize their own media players
  • how to integrate HTML5 media with other HTML5 elements
  • how to use HTML5 media in games and other richer experiences
  • about the integration with mobile platforms

A snapshot of the course content is available in the course description below.

Taught by Mark Boas, the course will last 5 weeks, from 17 October to 20 November 2011.

To ensure your place on the course, do enroll now! The full price of the course is €225 but we have a limited number of seats available at the early bird rate of €145, open until 12 October 2011. Enroll now and benefit from the early bird rate!

Who should attend?

People who want to learn about the potential of HTML5 Rich Media and who have an interest in using HTML5 audio and video APIs to create rich media Web solutions.

Prerequisites

Web developers and designers with a fair to good working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

How does this work?

The online course is delivered as a series of 5 modules, one per week. Each module presents information as one or more lectures and includes an assignment and some other activity. The material for the week is made available on each Monday morning (at the latest). You should aim to complete the week’s work by the following weekend although assignments will be accepted up until the end of the course.

You can participate in the course from any time zone. When you choose to work on the material and assignments is entirely up to you. It is anticipated that you will need to spend around 2-3 hours per week on the course (as an average).

Interaction between participants is strongly encouraged through the discussion forum. The discussion forum is open at all times and the teachers will usually respond in good time, especially during (European) office hours.

All course material is presented in English. Assignments must also be submitted in English. Participants may post messages to the discussion forum in any language.

How Do I get a Certificate of Completion?

The course includes 5 practical tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) that all need to be completed satisfactorily if you are to receive a certificate of completion.

What do I need?

All material is delivered via the Web and so is accessible on any browser. The course is hosted by a Moodle platform. Participants are allocated an account on the training system and this grants access to course materials and the a dedicated discussion forum. Register now!

About the trainer: Mark Boas

Mark Boas photoMark Boas is a Web developer with over 12 years experience of developing sites and applications for the Web. Active in the community he speaks at international and local events and blogs when time permits. Mark divides his day between research and development and is project co-ordinator of jPlayer, the successful JavaScript media library with a growing community of over 1500 developers. Mark creates projects demonstrating the potential of jPlayer and helps out on the community forum. In addition Mark is involved with the W3C audio group. Recently Mark has been experimenting with a new and interesting technology dubbed hyperaudio. More details of Mark’s work can be found at http://happyworm.com

Course description: “HTML5 Audio & Video”

Using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, students will learn as they build increasingly comprehensive media players and solutions. By learning about the underlying technology, the aim is that the student will understand the full potential of the media, the tools and the tricks of the trade. Armed with this sound knowledge of HTML5 audio and video and its potential, students will be able to confidently create cross-browser HTML5 based audio/video solutions.

Each week ends with a practical assignment.

Week 1: Introduction to HTML5 Media

We look at the back-story of media on the Web and where we are and then launch into creating our very own media player using HTML5. We’ll start with the basics and take you the various capabilities of the <audio> and <video> tags and the API, while keeping a firm grasp of the pragmatic issues that a developer will need to tackle to create cross browser solutions.
Week 1 assignment: “Creating your first basic audio and video player”

Week 2: Tools of the trade

HTML5 media must be correctly encoded to ensure maximum compatibility throughout the various target platforms. We explore the various tools and services available to encode and host our media and then delve deeper into the extensive HTML5 media API to take our player to the next level.
Week 2 assignment: “Encode your own media”

Week 3: Media player controls

We take a look at the various controls and feedback that we need to create to provide a comprehensive media player and explore the mechanisms that lie behind them.
Week 3 assignment: “Add a functional progress bar to your audio and video players”

Week 4: Playlists

One of the most desired functions for audio and sometimes video players is the ability to have playlists. Playlists allow you to order a number of pieces of media for sequential playback.
Week 4 assignment: “Add a playlist to your audio player and add subtitles to your video player”

Week 5: Integrating Video with other HTML5 Elements

One of the great advantages of HTML5 media is that it can interact with other HTML elements, we can have a lot of fun with this.
Week 5 assignment: “Integrate canvas or WebGL with video, and create audio spot effects”

Terms and conditions

The training course is offered subject to the following terms and conditions.

  • W3C will deliver the course in line with the published description for the advertised fee.
  • Payment must be made, in full, at the time of registration.
  • Payment is processed using either a credit card or a PayPal account.
  • Participants may withdraw from the course at any time after registration.
  • Refunds will only be made if the participant withdraws within the first week of the online course.
  • W3C intends to continue to make the course material available to registered participants for at least 2 months after the course has ended.
  • All material, including that produced by participants, in assignments and correspondence is copyrighted property and cannot be copied, duplicated, posted on another Web site, or otherwise used without the original author’s consent. Conversations and posted messages are private and cannot be copied, duplicated, forwarded, or conveyed to anyone else without the original author’s permission.

Questions?

Please write to training@w3.org . Thx.

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Convergence of Web and TV at NEM Summit 2011

July 28, 2011

For the second year in a row, I — where I stands for François Daoust, part of the OMWeb team — will be pleased to attend and present at the NEM Summit, 27-29 September 2011, in Torino, Italy. Last year, I focused on the HTML5 <video> tag, showing that it is a useful first step to integrate video on the Web, even though challenges remain. The slides Towards Video on the Web with HTML5 I presented back then, as well as the underlying paper are available online.

Thanks to a series of workshops on the convergence of Web and TV (a third workshop is to take place in Hollywood!) and the creation of the Web and TV Interest Group, W3C has been exploring challenges and potential solutions to ensure a successful convergence between Web and TV. The paper I submitted to NEM Summit this year, Adopting HTML5 for Television: Next Steps (PDF), presents key topics discussed in W3C (e.g. home networking scenarii, extensions to HTML5, etc.) and likely next steps from a standardization perspective.

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Supporting commercial service provider requirements in HTML

June 23, 2011

As part of its exploration of requirements and potential solutions to ensure that the Web will function well with TV, the Web and TV Interest Group has launched a Media Pipeline Task Force, set to discuss requirements placed on the HTML5 video, audio and media interfaces by media formats that will be used for Web and TV.

While HTML5 already goes some way to bringing audio and video to the Web, there remain a few areas to address for commercial video service provider to propose high-quality services using the Open Web Platform. A few example use cases that could come to mind:

  • Enabling access to parameters controlling the adaptive bitrate algorithm (when such an algorithm is used) and more generically exposing statistics and metrics on media streaming performance.
  • Content splicing to link together media content in a continuous stream
  • Browser handling of dynamic tracks, for instance when the media stream is of indefinite duration, as happens on a TV channel.
  • Enhancements to media elements to augment the video experience with metadata sent in sync with the media stream

The Media Pipeline Task Force is to discuss and propose extensions to the <video> and <audio> elements to support these additional requirements and enable a quality of experience for videos on the Web similar to the one that exists in the traditional TV world.

This Task Force is the second task force of the Web and TV Interest Group. The on-going Home Network Task Force is actively working on a use cases and requirements document to enable home networking scenarios, such as using the Web browser on a mobile device to interact with the TV set.

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Audio/Video conferencing on the Web

May 6, 2011

Yesterday, W3C announced the creation of a new Working Group, the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group (or Web RTC WG)

As defined in its charter, The Web RTC group is to define client-side APIs to enable Real-Time Communications in Web browsers. These APIs should enable building applications that can be run inside a browser, requiring no extra downloads or plugins, that allow communication between parties using audio, video and supplementary real-time communication, without having to use intervening servers (unless needed for firewall traversal, or for providing intermediary services).

In short, the group is to enable audio/video conferencing scenarios directly from within the Web browser. We’re looking forward to seeing this become a reality!

The work got created as a result of exploration discussions at the RTC Web Workshop back in October 2010. It will not prescribe underlying codecs and protocols to be supported by Web browsers but will in close relationship with the IETF Real-Time Communication WEB group to ensure compatibility between the API functions that the W3C group will work on and the Profile that the IETF group will define.

Instructions to join the group are available.

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MPEG-LA under anti-trust scrutiny

March 4, 2011

The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Justice Department is starting to examine whether MPEG-LA is breaking anti-trust with its call for patents that may be infringed by Google’s VP8 codec.