[webkit-dev] Implementation thoughts on HTML5 elements

[Patrick Mueller]

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> - New media elements: <audio>, <video>
>   We love these and have them implemented. We don't see any 
> implementation issues in the current spec.

I played with the audio support about a month ago, and was unpleasantly 
surprised to find that if you loop audio there is a noticeable delay 
(sub-second, but very noticeable) between when the audio clip ended and 
then started again, in WebKit nightlies on the Mac.

I posted a Q on the whatwg ml as to whether there was an intention that 
looped audio (and video, for that matter) should be "seamless".  Got 
various responses.  AnneK responded that the intention was for it to be 
seamless.  Ian responded that large clips couldn't be guaranteed to be 
buffered enough to make seamless audio a requirement.

So there's some wiggle room in the spec.  And of course, since the 
implementation of the audio support is a platform issue, not much we can 
do about this to magically make audio seamless for every platform. 
Still, seamless looping seems like something webkit ports should strive for.

As an example, paste this into the snippet editor

    <audio
       src="http://is.gd/2zHIy"
       autoplay="true"
       loop="true">

You'll hear 4-5 seconds of static, then it pauses before it restarts.

-- 
Patrick Mueller - http://muellerware.org