W3C

– DRAFT –
MEIG monthly meeting

07 May 2024

Attendees

Present
Andreas_Tai, Chris_Lorenzo, Chris_Needham, Francois_Daoust, Hiroki_Endo, Hisayuki_Ohmata, Igarashi, JohnRiv, John_Riviello, Kaz_Ashimura, Kinji_Matsumra, Nigel_Megitt, Piers_O'Hanlon, Song_Xu, Tatsuya_Igarashi
Regrets
-
Chair
Chris_Lorenzo, Chris_Needham, Tatsuya_Igarashi
Scribe
cpn, cpn2, kaz

Meeting minutes

Welcome

ChrisN: Welcome, this is the first meeting for a while, hope to maintain regular meeting schedule in future.

Slideset: https://www.w3.org/2011/webtv/wiki/images/b/bf/2024-05-07-MEIG.pdf <-- Chris's slides

... Agenda for today, we have a lot topics
… Launching web apps on TV devices,
… Media Content Metadata CG proposal
… Media WG updates
… TPAC 2024 plans
… If you think of any potential agenda items, very welcome. Anything else for today?

Song: There is a media workshop coming up in a few weeks
… Francois supposed to be there to give a talk
… I just wanted to remind everyone.
… Hopefully it will be open for attendees from all areas

ChrisN: If it's open, we can join it. I'd be happy to share the details with MEIG members. Thank you!

Launching Web applications on TV devices

ChrisN: ChrisL generated a demo video, showing the approaches for TV app development across different devices.

(shows ChrisL's video)

ChrisL: what happens is testing on one device

ChrisL: I'm here to talk about what it's like to do TV app development.
… I want to start off simple with here is a demo app that I've built as a web developer.
… It's pretty easy to get started I have VSCode, I have my demo app up and then I can hit npm start and it just pops up in Chrome.
… So now I'm in Chrome I have everything working. I can use my arrow keys to move around, etc.
… I can do development just like I were a web developer (which I am).
… I have access to Chrome, all the Chrome Dev tools, and this is great.
… Then what happens is we need to start testing it on devices and there's many different TV devices, and the process for all those different TV devices is different, so this video is really trying to go through what are those differences, and how can we make things simpler?
… So again, starting off we have just Chrome, a normal development flow, this works really well. It's pretty straightforward.

Raspberry Pi 3

ChrisL: Next I usually move to my Raspberry Pi 3. So I have a Raspberry Pi 3 on my desk and it comes with this RDK. It has RDKimage loaded on it, which has a development URL so the device actually has an IP address.
… I connect to that IP address and it gives me this great interface that I can go in here and I can just set the URL that I actually want to load to test on, so I can click "set" and then I have the Raspberry Pi hooked up through my laptop through a USB-C capture card so I actually can see this is the device here.
… This is the Raspberry Pi output at 1080P and inside this so if I have focus on this I can actually press the arrow keys and it will actually move the focus it will send those keys to the Raspberry Pi device.
… This is probably the easiest way to do testing on an actual device, and a Raspberry Pi 3 is probably as performant as some of the TV devices out there, but this gives me a full test environment on a simulated TV device that I can actually play with and see what the experience is like.
… I think this is the pinnacle of what I would like to see for other TV manufacturers.
… I should be able to enable developer mode and have a port that opens up that I can connect to the device and then have just an input box for saying this is the URL I want you to load.

LG Web OS Simulator

ChrisL: For our next device we're going to talk about LG, which is Web OS. They offer a simulator, which they have a whole bunch of different versions of simulators.
… I was able to download the Web OS TV 6.0 simulator for for my Mac so you can download this, unzip it, and then it will actually just give you an executable so you can double click to open the Web OS TV simulator from here.
… You'll get this little screen here and you have to add the web app so in order to add the web app you need to go into the file launch app and then you have to give it a directory, so this will open up a directory for you, which they give you an example hosted app, which is this code here.
… Essentially the hosted web app is just a little folder that you have to tell it there's an index.html file in there and then you can set the index.html file this window.location.href to redirect the screen to your demo app URL.
… So that's what I'm doing here, so now if we go back into the simulator I can actually double click this, it will open up the app here and now I can use my keys and work with this.
… This is a pretty good experience, it's a little more difficult, you have to download this 80 megabyte simulator.
… To get it up and going you have to download this hosted web app, you have to figure out putting a URL in there, and then loading it up.
… The other thing is this will give you a TV app experience as far as calling the APIs and simulating what it's actually like running on the devices, but it won't allow you to do performance testing because you're running at pretty much native speeds on your developer box, so you're going to get 60 frames per second no matter how fast you go so you can't really test the performance on the device but otherwise I think this simulator is a pretty good experience.

LG Web OS on a TV

ChrisL: Next we'll actually try loading on TV, which is a much different experience.
… So now we move on to trying to get our application going on the Web OS TV.
… I have a physical TV here and I've spent the last two hours, I've time boxed it, to try to get my web app loaded on there, and I want to go through that process.
… And really again this is about the process, so we did the simulator that works pretty well, it's pretty easy to get up and running.
… It worked on my Mac, I couldn't get an older version of Web OS 4 running on my Mac, I mean once you get that you have to figure out the Java runtime, you have to make sure it works, there's a VirtualBox that you might have to install.
… I tried doing it on my Windows machine too. That's again additional work which I again time boxed and I didn't want to try to finish that up. LG provides this web OS tools, this was actually very easy to install, this is just npm install Web OS tool CLI.
… Once you do this you get these command line tools this Ares CLI to actually deploy your app to a TV device and then this is the steps using the developer guide to go through so I originally got a USB cable and tried connecting that to TV and I realized I didn't have to do that.
… The TV is connected with an IP address, I had to go through this Ares generate, I bundled my hosted app using the Ares generate command.
… No, I already had an app created so I had to bundle my app, deploy the web app to a TV, so I had to package the app.
… I did that and then in order to install the web app, this is where it gets a little bit tricky, you have to first go create an LG account, then on the TV you have to enable developer mode, you have to download a developer mode app so you have to go in the LG store, install the developer mode app then you have to log in with your email address and password which is always fun to do with a remote control, entering your email address and password.
… So after a few minutes of that and updates on the TV, the developer mode app is actually pretty good. You just enable SSH on there, it opens up the ports and then using this CLI you can find the TV, set up the device.
… I went through these instructions it was very smooth, and eventually I was able to connect. I was able to package up my web app and then do this Ares install.
… All of this worked really well, I got to the point where I went to run the app and then I think there's some stuff that I have to debug because it didn't fully run and that's again on my end.
… But then I tried to debug it, which they do have an inspector for the LG TV, unfortunately it's tied to the web OS version since this is a Web OS 4 TV that I have it won't work with the latest version of Chrome, it works with Chromium 68 which then I had to download. I can't download that old version on my Mac so then I couldn't get it working on my Mac.
… I tried doing it on my Windows machine. I got it running there but then I realized on my Windows machine I then have to install the Ares tools because it creates a proxy for you to use the inspector so I can't connect through my Mac, I have to connect through my PC, redo all the steps to be able to debug through Chrome.
… Again I spent probably an hour or two hours going through all these steps, tying it together, getting it up, still not fully able to debug the app yet, but this was quite a process, and ideally it would be a lot simpler with like not needing an account to log into the TV, maybe there's a developer mode already on the TV that I can just toggle on that gives me access, but overall I think the instructions and everything are clear, it just takes a little while to run through them all and actually get on the TV.

Samsung Tizen

ChrisL: So now I'm moving on to getting Tizen working.
… I have a monitor here that is Samsung, it's an excellent monitor, USB-C it's connected to my desktop right now and that's what you're seeing on the screen this is actually the Samsung monitor.
… I think the first struggle that you run into trying to deploy to a Samsung Tizen TV is there are two separate URLs with very similar docs, so I'm going to be spending my time figuring out how to actually deploy an application to this monitor and figure out the bundling process and what I need to install.

ChrisL: Once I get it up and running I'll report back with the steps.
… OK, so after a few hours of trying to get my web app going on a Samsung device, I've basically given up.
… I tried, I have the Tizen CLI installed, you have to get the Tizen Studio installed, then there's VS Code extensions which I got installed and then you need to install the .NET Framework.
… It's really difficult, I've basically given up because I have only a few hours and in that few hours I was still not able to get it going.
… I think one of the big issues is there's conflicting documentation all over the place, with this Developer Samsung versus tizen.org. Some of the documentation is outdated, there's there's no clear path forward.
… A lot of the Samsung tools are made for the mobile phone plus also TV plus the watch and they try to make it one way of doing it for all their devices which then makes it more complicated to get it going on a TV.
… I did get my monitor to have developer mode on it but in the long run I was able to bundle it up.
… I just don't know how to connect to the TV device yet. I'll probably try continuing a little later.

Wrap up

ChrisL: I guess that kind of wraps up. The purpose of this video is to demonstrate how simple it is to do the development, to run it on a dev box that is made for running, and just you give it a URL.
… And then as you move into LG TV that was pretty decent, it still took an hour especially you don't know what you're doing.
… And then we go on to the Samsung TV, I I still haven't been able to get it going and I have years of experience working with many different tools.
… And then I have a HiSense TV and that's like another different development process, and ideally we should get to the point where you can just turn on developer mode on your TV give it a URL and it launches your website. That's the ideal.
… So hopefully this was informative, people can learn something from this video. Thank you!

ChrisN: Thanks! Any questions?

Piers: I'm curious about the image on the Raspberry pi. Is that something that's available?

ChrisL: It's a Raspberry Pi 3 with with RDK and WPE browser

ChrisN: So there's a lot of variations for TV devices, depending on the TV manufacturers.
… Ideally you want to be able to point to web server on your local network for testing purposes.
… We would need to engage the manufacturers, to progess towards a common approach.
… It would be interesting to see it happen.

Song: LG WebOS is quite new to me.
… It looks interesting for interactive app devleopment.

<ChrisLorenzo6> https://github.com/WebPlatformForEmbedded/meta-wpe?tab=readme-ov-file#quick-start

Song: If developer wants to use the simulator, it's dedicated to to particular manufacturers, or does it work with any Android TV platform? If WebOS is available other platforms? Any special requirements for remote controls?
… Any special requirements for remote control?

ChrisL: The remote control is pretty standard, but keys can vary across devices, but we can map them to left, right, up, down controls.
… LG has a magic remote with mouse pointer and click events.
… Primary goal here is for getting on TV devices for testing.
… All have a browser, so the dev environment should be standard, but the thing that differs is performance, for testing if the app is fast enough, because the TV is much slower than your development box.
… TV device might have only 1GB memory, also CPU is much slower

ChrisN: OK, let's follow up this. Thanks. Anything else?

(none)

Media Content Metadata CG proposal

Endo: I'll share my screen

https://www.w3.org/2011/webtv/wiki/images/1/16/20240507_MEIG_NHK_Endo.pdf <-- Endo's slides
… Media Content Metadata CG Proposal

Endo: We had a breakout session at TPAC 2023
… We confirmed that more discussion is needed in W3C. So we decided to set up a CG, an open community to exchange ideas between a wide range of industries
… The group will share best practices for media content metadata, in Japanese language, focusing on existing business issues
… We plan to propose the group in May.
… The group has two scopes: media industry collaboration and outside media industry collaboration.
… We have member candidates from industries, including 5 non-W3C members. I'll share progress with MEIG, and want to discuss with MEIG members.

Chris: MEIG is happy to support, look forward to seeing your progress.

Kaz: Endo-san, do you have a timeline for launching the group, at some point in May?

Endo: We plan to have an event at the NHK open-house on 13 May.
… We hope to propose and establish the group before that event.

Spatial media requirements

ChrisN: In the March 19 Media WG meeting, Apple presented gaps identified for spatial media on Vision OS devices

Mar-19 minutes

ChrisN: I'll just run through the topics briefly.
… First, presentation of stereo video, a single video stream with different content for the left and right eye.
… Pointing to the need for rendering capability detection.
… It's not really a decoding problem, useful for different devices with different rendering capability.
… Next thing is motion safety when presenting immersive video on immersive device.
… If there is too much motion, people may feel unwell
… so should have some kind of metadata to detect it, then the device can respond by adjusting how the content is rendered, maybe in a less immersive way.
… Another topic is display capability detection, how to detect the capabilities of full screen mode?
… The context for this: on Vision OS devices, the browser is presented as a 2D plane in the 3D environment.
… So you can essentially see the browser in a 3D environment. And the browser can show 3D content within the web page.
… For example, the proposed HTML model element.
… So this is about applying a similar kind of approach to video media presentation.
… Next, an accessibility related requirement was identified for caption depth data
… I expect Apple would think of this as an extension to WebVTT,
… to associate each caption with depth information to avoid overlapping with 3D objects in the video.

nigel: Z order sounds like an HTML thing, which is already supported by TTML and CSS.
… You would need to use the correct units, identify the actual distance,
… so there's a need for some better coordinate system.

ChrisN: Yes, that's interesting.
… It's not really Z order for video, it's more about the depth of the scene.
… I think that was more how Jer described the requirement than how they might see a solution.
… But is this something that is being worked on elsewhere?

Nigel: The Immersive Captions CG published a report,
… it's probably worth maybe asking them to join a meeting to discuss.
… I'll circulate the document here.

<nigel> Recommendations for accessible captions in 360 degree video - Final Community Group Report 08 April 2024

ChrisN: Thanks
… We had some pretty productive discussions with the Immersive Web community some years ago, but not followed up since then.

Kaz: I also think this is interesting and exciting. Thing about the synchronisation among objects, data, and captions would be important for 3D video and metaverse applications
… As a basic platform for next-gen video services, I think it would be important for smart city purposes as well. They think about metaverse and city-verse as a framework
… and digital twin platform for handling devices and virtual presentation. The direction should become more important for this spatial media discussion
… Existing standards like TTML and WebVMT should be good candidates.
… The smart city IG should start next month, we're wrapping up the wide review at the moment

Andreas: Chris, you mentioned MEIG's previous discussions. We talked about it at TPAC Fukuoka.
… In TTWG we were thinking of starting activity on immersive captions, but we didn't see enough industry interest.
… Also the immersive web standards were missing, some baseline to work with to provide a solution for immersive captions.
… At the time, we thought if we started something, TTWG would try to align efforts on TTML and WebVTT so they follow the same rules.
… There have been some discussions, meeting notes, an incubator issues, may be worth collecting them again.

ChrisN: Good idea to collect the resource. Is there growing interest in this at the moment?

Atai: This came up at NAB just recently, there seems to be some interest now.

Song: Regarding interest from developers in the CG, one reason could be there may not be enough members from TV developers
… The features are relevant for people for different industries, but the spatial media and TV OS topics are interesting for me.

ChrisN: We have an Overview of Media Technologies for the Web document. Could be a useful place to document the current status and needs.

https://w3c.github.io/web-roadmaps/media/ <-- Overview of Media Technologies for the Web
… Your help welcome to do pull together those resources and update the report.

Kaz: As Media WG and MEIG chair, do you want to think about joint discussion with Spatial Data on the Web WG?

<kaz> Spatial Data on the Web Working Group

ChrisN: I think MEIG should do that, let's follow up on possible topics.

ChrisN: To complete the spatial media requirements, next is 360/180 viewport controls, so controls on the video element to let users change the viewpoint.
… Spatial soundscpes, need clarifcation on what's needed here, it's possible Web Audio is enough.
… Environment dimming support, so controlling brightness of the outside environment.

TPAC 2024 plans

ChrisN: Should we organize a F2F meeting during TPAC 2024 on 23-27 Sep in Anaheim, California?
… what topics to discuss? One proposal already is next generation audio, covered at previous TPACs.
… Anything else? I would probably request 2 meeting slots, so a morning or afternoon.
… Also do we want joint meetings, e.g., with TTWG. Nigel, let's follow up on that.

Kaz: We need to respond to W3T by 20 May, so want feedback and ideas by end of next week.

ChrisN: Agree, that would be ideal, or the following week at the very latest.

[adjourned]

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 196 (Thu Oct 27 17:06:44 2022 UTC).