September 2013

WebRTC
• New draft of the WebRTC API has been published as TR Working Draft: w3.org/TR/webrtc
• Hardware decoding for WebRTC enabled on Chrome OS
• WebRTC for Web Devs event at SFHTML5
• 14 Google Developer Groups in 10 countries are running the WebRTC codelab from this week
• Firefox 24 on Android and desktop: WebRTC enabled by default
• Idea for WebRTC social networks

EME
• Intent to Ship on Android, 20 August: Encrypted Media Extension (EME) API with Widevine content decryption module (CDM) in Chrome for Android, to be launched in M31.
• Intent to Ship on Android, 20 August: same, but with ClearKey decryption, launched in M30.
VP9

Web Speech
• Speech recognition on Android: Intent to Ship

Web Audio
• Boris Smus's Sonic Socket

Media
• New Editor's Draft of MediaStream Image Capture API:
• getFrame() creates an ImageData object available in onframegrab handler
• takePhoto() creates a Blob available in onphoto handler
And finally...
• The Qt framework (for building cross-platform/device native and embedded apps, now owned by Digia) is moving from Qt WebKit to Qt WebEngine, based on Chromium: 'Multimedia and new HTML5 features such as WebRTC are working out-of the-box ....'
• Extracting a 3D object from a photograph
• Sony Smart Stick: $150 Android, plugs into TV MHL socket (no need for separate cable)
• Comments on NSA and encryption
• joinaspot.com: WebRTC video conference app with Chrome extension for notifications
The Recording Industry Association of America calculates that revenues from services including Spotify, Pandora and YouTube went from 3 per cent of industry revenues in 2007 to 15 per cent, or more than $1bn, in 2012. … What is lost from many calculations is the fact that the urge to own may be weaker in the age of streaming, but so is the urge to steal. Traffic to peer-to-peer file-sharing and torrent sites is declining where legal alternatives are offered. Netflix’s Ted Sarandos said in May: 'When we launch in a territory, the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows.'
• Scalable Video Coding deal with Vidyo
• Skype 3D
• VP8 HD hangouts
• 10bn Shazam tags (>100m per week, 54% from TV)
• IETF call for all web traffic to encrypted as a defence against mass surveillance
• HDMI 2.0: 18Gbps bandwidth, 60fps 4K, 32 channel audio, same connector and cable
• MPEG-DASH at the BBC:
The media is encoded a number of times at different bitrates. Each encoding is called a Representation. These are split into a number of Media Segments. The client plays a programme by requesting segments, in order, from a representation over HTTP. Representations can be grouped into Adaptation Sets of representations containing equivalent content. If the client wishes to change bitrate it can pick an alternative from the current adaption set and start requesting segments from that representation. Content is encoded in such a way to make this switching easy for the client to do. In addition to a number of media segments, a representation generally also has an Initialisation Segment. This can be thought of as a header, containing information about the encoding, frame sizes, etc. A client needs to obtain this for a given representation before consuming media segments from that representation.

Finally, there is also a Media Presentation Description (MPD), commonly referred to as the manifest. This documents the Adaptation Sets and Representations, together with durations and URLs.