Video on the Web

W3C Architecture Domain Leader,
Co-Chair of the W3C Workshop on Video on the Web

What's on the Internet tonight?

The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source […]
— Saul Berman, IBM Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change

Marjorie "Marge" Simpson using the Web (© Fox Broadcasting Company)
© Fox Broadcasting Company

There is a decline of TV as Primary Media Device.
Nearly 75% of US Internet users watched online video
Video producers are looking at ways to increase their reach.
Broadcast TV advertisement is a $60B market, Internet (not counting search) is $10B. $4.3B spend in online video advertising over the next 4 years. Online video ad revenues are growing 55.5% per year.

Video Forecast

Cisco's Global Consumer Internet Traffic Forecast

Cisco's Global Consumer Internet Traffic Forecast
Source: Cisco, 2007

Video is driving IP traffic growth
thus consumer bandwidth will increase (but never enough)
Increase in volume of video content
In 2011, nearly 30% is Internet Video, additional 30% due to Video P2P

Increase in Video Online Content

User Generated Video Uploads per day

User-Generated Video Uploads per Day
Source: IDC, 2007

So, what does all this tell us?

YouTube was Just the Beginning: launched in 2005, take 4% of the US Internet Traffic by the end of 2006.
While TV brought us information and entertainment, online video adds the social aspect dimension, it's a means of expression. YouTube and MySpace are good examples. The value is the combination of communications and content.
Multiple and fragmentation of multiple video platforms
Drive towards higher quality, ideally HD. Camcorders and HDTV are getting deployed.
User Generated Content helps drives the number

W3C Workshop

W3C Video on the Web Workshop

12-13 December 2007, San Jose, California and Brussels, Belgium

Hosted by Cisco Systems

W3C Video Workshop Telepresence
Photo credit: Chris Lilley

Make video a first-class object on the Web

W3C Workshop Participants

Accenture, Adobe Systems, Annodex Association, Apple, CBS Interactive, CableLabs, Canon, Capgemini, CWI, Cisco Systems, Dailymotion, Hitachi, Hot Potato, IBBT, IJS, MTV Networks, Meraka Institute, Motorola, Move Networks, Mozilla Foundation, Nemours Foundation, Nokia Corporation, RealNetworks, Samsung Electronics, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Thomson, Turner Broadcasting System, University Of California at Santa Cruz, University of Wollongong, VRT medialab, Via Licensing, Walt Disney Internet Group, Web3D Consortium, Wright State University, YouTube, thePlatform

Steve Bratt makes a point in Black and White
Photo credit: Robert Freund

Workshop Laundry list

<video> HTML 5.0
Codecs and formats
Metadata
Content protection
Media fragment
Accessibility
Tagging
Searchability
Synchronization, Temporal properties for styling
Distribution: cost, QoS, tracking, mobile, etc.
Playlist files
…

Accessibility is still an issue

HTML 5 <video>

<video src='Standards.movie'
        id='vid'
        controls
>

var vid = document.getElementById("vid");
vid.play();
vid.pause();
vid.muted = true;
vid.addCueRange("ranges", 10, 20, false,
                enterCallBack, exitCallBack);

HTML 5 Requirements for a Video codec

Known not to require per-unit or per-distributor licensing

Compatible with the open source development model

Of sufficient quality as to be usable

Not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies

None of the codecs fit the requirements for HTML 5…

Metadata

Many standards: MPEG 7, SMIL, iTunes XML, Yahoo! MediaRSS, CableLabs VOD Metadata Content, Video sitemaps, etc.
Different sources: Content Creator, Publisher, Professional Content, Users.
Survivability: allowing the metadata to survive along the delivery chain (transcoding, republication, syndication, etc.).
Ability to add metadata without touching the data

Goals:

Search
Discover

Content protection

Pushed by the content owners: monetizing commercial content
Enforce usage rights
Monitor content usage
DRM, watermarking, fingerprinting

Media Fragments

Linking into video content

Can I have a URI to the third item in the news report, please?

Media Fragments: Spatial

Beth, the audience, Belgium, her pitch, and herself
Photo credit: Robert Freund

http://www.example.org/imedia.mov#rect(50,50,200,100)

Media Fragments: Temporal

Temporal addressing

http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2007/09/OneWebDay#t=34.45/85.48

Motivations: Playlists of video highlights, Search results, Mashups, Caching
Addressing: offset, segment, named event

Next steps: Video on the Web Activity

See draft of Activity proposal

Media Fragments Working Group (video, audio, and images)
Media Annotation Working Group: Develop a simple lingua franca ontology and map it to existing formats
Best Practices and Guidelines for Media Content on the Web (see next slide)

Media Fragments Working Group

Address temporal and spatial media fragments on the Web using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)


http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2007/09/OneWebDay#t=34.45/85.48

http://www.example.org/imedia.mov#rect(50,50,200,100)

Media Annotations Working Group (1/2)

simple lingua-franca ontology

Media Annotations Working Group (2/2)

Client side read-only media annotations API

var vid = document.getElementById("vid");
vid.getTitle();
vid.getAuthor();
vid.getRights();
vid.getLicense();
vid.createDate();

See demo

Guidelines for Media Content on the Web

Scope is deployment, use, and manipulation of media content.
Targeted towards user agents, authoring tools, protocols, and formats.

Potential items on the list:

Transport protocol guidelines, e.g. bandwidth, use of the HTTP protocol.
content-adaptation guidelines, e.g. video resolution
Dealing with media annotations
User experience guidelines, e.g. localization, captioning, video description, user interface
Video API guidelines
Linking from Video content

Questions?

Why now and not 5 years ago?
Who needs to get involved?
Is W3C going to create a new video codec?

http://www.w3.org/2008/Talks/24-video