mime types and video/audio files (was Re: Review of the thumbnailer spec)

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Philip Van Hoof wrote:

> In fact is it even worse for video thumbnailers, as the great guys of
> the many multimedia frameworks and codecs decided to have types inside
> of container MIME types. Making MIME mostly irrelevant for videos.
 >
> Thanks guys. For majorly messing things up once more in the world of
> file formats. Making it all more difficult for all. Instead of simply
> registering new MIME types that contain the codec in their MIME type
> name (I still wonder why the heck not).

I hope you're not seriously suggesting something like 
application/mkv-h264-mp3.  Because yes, you do need to specify all 
three.  It's very possible (and common) to have a codec supported in one 
container but not others, or to lack support for some container formats 
but not others.

And what happens when you have a video file with more than one audio 
track?  Do you have yet another MIME type for it?  How do you order the 
audio tracks?

MIME types just aren't suitable for describing video file contents and 
types, unless they can be extended to allow a single file to have 
multiple MIME types.  Then you might have a single file with types 
application/matroska, video/h264, audio/mp3, and audio/ac3 (or 
something).  But IIRC nothing like that is valid at present.

If anything, MIME made *itself* irrelevant for videos by being too 
inflexible.  The a/v guys certainly aren't to blame.

	-b