On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Nic Ferrier wrote:
Are you a big fan of the Yahoo! sponsored Media RSS? Or maybe you would just prefer simple enclosure tags? Are there any other options we have missed?At the moment, I'm personally persuaded by MediaRSS. In most instances, for each of our videos we need to reflect: * Multiple encoding formats * Multiple encoding bit-rates * Whether they are available to all or just UK-based IP'sI believe the content description is best done with HTTP and MIME.
They do different things.
If a file is available in different encoding formats (say Real or WMV) you should use cool-uris for your media and then they can be discovered with HTTP. For example consider an episode of Dr.Who: /video/drwho/series1/episode1 could be available in WMV and RMA; if the accept header on a request states the type of content acceptable then the server can reply with unacepptable (406) if it doesn't have it. I'm not aware of anything in MIME right now to specify bit rates of entities - byt maybe the BBC could spec something? It seems like an extra header would be a good idea. And anyway, bit rates could easily be represented in URIs. As far as availablity is concerned that could be implemented as an HTTP 412 (precondition failed) response to a request from a non-UK ISP.
Which is great for a browser looking to play an individual show. And a complete pain for a script wanting to find all shows in all possible formats from multiple providers. Doing it in HTTP headers limits you to what you know at fetch time, which could be far less than what you know at run time if you're not in a desktop browser environment. most of the stuff I run, which could find this useful, uses a very simple fetcher and caches everything on disc for postprocessing along with other requests. Using HTTP alone means that that isn't possible. Sam -- Are you lonely? Hate having to make decisons? Meetings, the practical alternative to work. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
