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Media WebVTT Changes

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WebVTT as specified supports a large number of features, in particular for subtitles and captions. However, we keep coming across proposals for changes / improvements. This page has been created to collect them.

Related discussion: http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-January/029859.html

Related document: http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Media_608_WebVTT_Conversion


Allow file-wide Metadata

Allow for name-value pairs as file-wide metadata underneath the file magic string and specify the format for providing name-value pairs - an empty line determines the end of the header section.

NOTE: WebVTT is specified to ignore everything that is behind the "WEBVTT" identifier and the a blank line. Therefore, metadata can work like this:

WEBVTT
Language=zh
Kind=Caption

1
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:17.950
first cue

Rejected: Metadata like this will not be used by browsers. A different spec can make this possible, but not WebVTT. http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/text-tracks/raw-file/default/608toVTT/608toVTT.html does it.

Default Cue Settings

Introduce default cue settings in the header part of the file, possibly as a name-value pair, or some alternative dedicated form.

NOTE: Defaults could be added like this:

WEBVTT

DEFAULTS --> D:vertical A:end

00:00.000 --> 00:02.000
This is vertical and end-aligned.

00:02.500 --> 00:05.000
As is this.

DEFAULTS --> A:start

00:05.500 --> 00:07.000
This is horizontal and start-aligned.

Allow inline CSS

A subset of CSS features is required to bring HTML5 video captions on par with TV captions. Since non-browser applications will need to support these CSS features, too, it makes sense to allow the styles to be delivered inside a WebVTT file, too.

NOTE: This could be achieved with invalid cues like this:

  WEBVTT

  STYLE -->
  ::cue(v[voice=Bob]) { color: green; }
  ::cue(c.narration) { font-style: italic; }
  ::cue(c.narration i) { font-style: normal; }

  00:00.000 --> 00:02.000
  <v Bob>Welcome.

  00:02.500 --> 00:05.000
  <c .narration>To <i>WebVTT</i>.