W3C

Timed Text Working Group Teleconference

24 April 2025

Attendees

Present
Andreas, Atsushi, Chris_Needham, Cyril, Nigel, Pierre
Regrets
Gary
Chair
Nigel
Scribe
nigel, cpn

Meeting minutes

This meeting

Nigel: [reviews the agenda]
… Anything to add, or points to cover in those items?

(nothing)

Republication of png-hdr-pq WG Note

Nigel: PR 13 adds a warning note to point to PNG 3rd edition, in 2023. We haven't published an updated Note since then.
… The Note was published in 2017, and the Editor's Draft is 2023
… There are some broken references to fix too
… Proposal is to republish this note to include the most recent edits

Pierre: Sounds good

Chris: +1

PROPOSAL: Republish the PNG-HDR-PQ note to include the most recent edits

Nigel: Any objections?

no objections

RESOLUTION: Republish the PNG-HDR-PQ note to include the most recent edits

Nigel: Needs an editor, to fix some ReSpec errors

Pierre: I don't mind doing that

Pierre: I created w3c/png-hdr-pq#14

Comment about this resolution in the issue

Nigel: Anything else on this topic?

Pierre: After updating, how do we publish?

Apply streamlined publication to all of Note track documents

Nigel: We don't have auto-publication set up for Note track documents
… Atsushi asked if we wanted to do that

PROPOSAL: Apply streamlined publication to all Note track documents so that merging pull requests will trigger republication automatically

Nigel: Any reasons not to do this?

(none raised)

RESOLUTION: Apply streamlined publication to all Note track documents so that merging pull requests will trigger republication automatically

Nigel: Atsushi, could you set this up for us please, starting with the PNG HDR PQ Note?

Atsushi: Will do

DAPT

Transition DAPT requirements WG draft Note as formal Note?

DAPT Requirements WG Draft Note

PROPOSAL: Publish DAPT Requirements as a WG Note

Nigel: I think this is a useful document, and having a Note will be better to reference from the spec
… Any concerns or questions?

Chris: Sounds good to me

RESOLUTION: Publish DAPT Requirements as a WG Note

Test suite

Nigel: Lots of the issues have been updated in dapt-tests recently

dapt-tests repo issues

Nigel: I opened an issue for every feature that's listed in the implementation report, assuming we need tests for all of them
… More recently, I've gone through the spec text and written some detail about what test resources we need
… For example, valid and invalid cases for Profile Root
… I expect, for all these features there are no presentation semantics to test, but there are validity cases
… We'd expect any validator to confirm validity of valid tests, and invalidity of invalid tests
… There's a question about authoring tools, that aren't validators
… For those, I'd suggest a manual exercise to make the authoring tool generate output that stresses each feature should have that output be valid in a validator,
… where the validator also passes the validation test for that feature
… Essentially, if the validator seems to work, and if the authoring tool stresses the feature, and the validator validates that output, we can say the authoring tool did it's job
… Does that make sense?

Cyril: Yes. An authoring tool could exercise multiple features, so we don't need the same granularity

Nigel: Yes

Atsushi: What is WPT doing, for CSS, should be fine for us also

Nigel: CSS usually has visual output you can test against, but in our case we don't have that

Nigel: I've done 8 of them so far, just the analysis of test resources expected. Others welcome to contribute
… My plan is to keep going through them, there are 9 left

Cyril: To confirm, we're not going to try to create tests for combinations of invalid features?

Nigel: I think we should keep them as separate as we can

Cyril: The tests shouldn't be just for passing the exit criteria, they should be also more useful for implementers
… Maybe we can augment the test suite in the future

Nigel: Yes. Then we might want to discuss partitioning the files into CR exit criteria tests vs more general tests, or keep them all together

Cyril: I'd keep them all together, then the CR exit criteria tests is a subset

Nigel: That's fine
… There's one place in the spec where you can't avoid testing related features together: represents and scriptRepresents
… We should keep the tests to the smallest test resource that does the job

Cyril: I was thinking of using an AI agent to generate tests

Nigel: As long as we can verify them, OK

Cyril: Just as a way to learn using the AI agent ;-)

Nigel: Anything else on tests and implementation reports to cover?

Cyril: Netflix will contribute its implementation, more an authoring tool / transformation processor than a validator
… I don't have a coverage for AD parts. Do you have something for those parts?

Nigel: Yes, could be a third party one rather than BBC
… I could probably do a validator as well
… Different approaches there: augmenting the current TTT one, written in Java

Pierre: There's the toy validator created for TTML2, in JS, sandflow/ttval
… It's simple to extend
… If you're interested in this one, happy work with you on it

Cyril: To recap, in terms of passing exit criteria, if we have a validator, and a Netflix and BBC/Third party implementation, that passes the features, we're good to go?

Nigel: I think so
… One of the implementers I spoke to said they may have something by IBC in September
… May need to be quicker than that to include in the implementation report

Cyril: Better to have implementation feedback, in case they have suggested changes

<nigel> +1

Atsushi: Implementation would be judged feature by feature, we have a two implementation requirement

Nigel: Yes, the exit criteria is feature by feature, rather than each implementation having to be complete with respect to all the features

Nigel: Anything else on DAPT tests or implementation reports?

(nothing)

IMSC 1.3

Outgoing liaisons regarding IMSC 1.3 and Image Profile

Nigel: You'll have seen all the outgoing liaisons I've sent
… We have some responses, some about updating our liaison contact names
… We've also asked on social media
… Anything to say about early feedback?

Pierre: So far, it's been a surprise that nobody seems to have been using image profile across an ecosystem. It's used internally within some systems, but that's different
… No suggestion anyone is interested in modifying or maintaining it
… This is the private feedback I've received

Pierre: I'd be happy to keep Image Profile in IMSC 1.3 if someone wants to see changes or maintain it

Nigel: Just want to record I have the same view, even though I proposed removing it.

Pierre: Part of the challenge is it's hard to maintain if we don't know how people want to use it
… Nothing so far really
… We should give ourselves a deadline

Nigel: Some groups have a long response cycle...

Pierre: June?

Nigel: That's almost 3 months, a reasonable period, given some groups' response cycle

Pierre: We should aim to publish by end of this year, so go to CR soon

Atsushi: From W3C staff point of view, we might want to get more attention from external organisations, e.g., SMPTE
… so I'd like to write some statement to TAG or W3C management to invite points of view, an email about the collaboration points

Nigel: I wrote to SMPTE

Atsushi: Recently we got a small amount of interaction from W3C members. That means we could have smaller amount of interest among W3C members
… We may need to gain more member interaction on the timed text work
… Our output is quite stable, so updating activity should be quite low compared to other API development work in W3C

Nigel: What's the impact on IMSC 1.3?

Atsushi: There's some pressure that we need to gain impact from members of interest in our activity, or say new development is important for the public interest
… This kind of public interest should be questioned for our new work in the chartering process. Allow time for development within W3C. I hope we could gain more interest from external parties to our activities in the near future

Nigel: I'm not clear what action we might take right now
… Coming back to the liaisons, I sent them on 3 April. We have a call on 5 June, so let's use that to assess responses and come to a conclusion regarding image profile

Atsushi: That should be fine, as I understand

Nigel: Anything else about the liaisons?

(nothing)

Refer ARIB STD-B69 or STD-B62?

Nigel: Atsushi asked which ARIB document we should reference. Is there an easy answer?

Atsushi: I had a question from ARIB about the charter document. IMSC 1.3 defines ARIB STD-B62 but the charter and liaison statement mentions ARIB STD-B69, so they're wondering which is to be referenced from IMSC 1.3
… They said originally we referred to B62 for everything, but were surprised the liaison statement referred to B69, and also that it's in the draft charter

Nigel: B62 has coding of closed captions

Atsushi: Both refer to our specification. I haven't checked the differences between them
… They wonder if we want to update it to B69 from B62?

Nigel: I looked it up and STD-B69 is EXCHANGE FORMAT OF THE DIGITAL CLOSED CAPTION FILE FOR DIGITAL TELEVISION BROADCASTING SYSTEM

Nigel: Whereas STD-B62 is MULTIMEDIA CODING SPECIFICATION FOR DIGITAL BROADCASTING

Nigel: I don't mind, we can refer to both, it doesn't have to be one or the other
… The latest B62 looks more recent than B69
… No strong opinion

Pierre: Can we file an issue?

Atsushi: If we do that, I'd like to send an email to them about it. It's not a big issue, but we need to confirm

Nigel: Atsushi, could you please raise an issue in the IMSC repo?

Atsushi: Yes

AOB

Nigel: The AC review of the TTWG charter has opened. Please encourage your AC rep to vote

Atsushi: Yes, we want responses from all the participating organisations

Chris: I've responded already

Atsushi: I've asked the Japanese organisations to vote, but some might abstain

Nigel: Next meeting in 2 weeks on 2025-05-08

[adjourned]

Summary of resolutions

  1. Republish the PNG-HDR-PQ note to include the most recent edits
  2. Apply streamlined publication to all Note track documents so that merging pull requests will trigger republication automatically
  3. Publish DAPT Requirements as a WG Note
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).