• @dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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        11 days ago

        I have a rule. Every time I come upon their posts in the wild or see a significant update, I donate.

        • @mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1010 days ago

          It’s the best app for Lemmy, honestly. It feels like a spiritual successor to Apollo, which was a successor to AlienBlue. There are certain gripes I have about it, but those are small nitpicks that I rarely encounter, and would be true for virtually any Lemmy app.

  • who
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    11 days ago

    Maybe webm and mp4 files with multiple language tracks are usually played with a media player, not a web browser?

    • pretty much every animation u see online nowerdays is a webm, i just think it would be nice if browsers would support the full feature set of it, it would allow to put captions over animations where the captions dont get compressed and hence would stay readable even at high compression

      • @Tanoh@lemmy.world
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        911 days ago

        One problem with that use case is that you as the creator doesn’t control where (screen position) and how (font face, size, etc) the subtitles are rendered. The browser and user control that, so I doubt they would be widely used for meme because of this.

        However, I do agree that it would be nice to have support for it for other reasons.

        • @SatyrSack@feddit.org
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          611 days ago

          Is that specific to RIFF/WEBM or something? Because from my limited experience with subtitles, “the creator” absolutely does have control over that. Though it can always be overridden by the client, of course.

          • @Kissaki@programming.dev
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            11 days ago

            Supporting soft subs is a complex topic though. Three formats, font embedding, positioning and animations. It’s a ton of effort, and anything less than “full featureset support” will mean they don’t render how you design them in your full-set editor and local media play. And there will be differences and bugs, at least for a while. I suspect font rendering with various fonts in a media render context will have it’s own set of issues.

            I also think it’d be nice, but I can totally see how it may not make sense technically (complexity with its burdens vs need) or economically.

            Browsers are already absurdly complex though so… maybe? :P

    • @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      3111 days ago

      I mean, modern web browsers are trying to be absolutely everything else as well. Fully supporting a format isn’t exactly an outrageous expectation.

      • who
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        111 days ago

        I’m not suggesting that it’s outrageous. Merely that it’s probably not a high priority.

      • who
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        10 days ago

        Sure, but most YouTube streams aren’t delivered as a single webm or mp4 file, and the language & subtitle selection you’re referring to aren’t implemented by the browser (but instead by a JavaScript application downloaded from Google). So it’s not what OP asked about.

  • CodexArcanum
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    3610 days ago

    As discussed previously, browsers are quite complex and so adding a new feature (subtitles) is actually adding several features, on top of existing features (video player) that aren’t really (arguably) core to the web experience.

    (I think olds like me want to believe the web is still “for” text and static images, but the majority of users today are (allegedly) all-in on video.)

    Anyway, what sub-features make up “simple” subtitles? Oh the usual: where are they sourced? What format? What language? What encoding? (Utf8 one can only pray) Left to right support? Asian character support? What font are you using? System fonts? Are they widely supported? Does any of it work on mobile? Who holds the relevant patents? Etc.

    • @oldfart@lemm.ee
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      1810 days ago

      I’ll take complete video support over WebBluetooth, DRM, WebGL and other similar garbage.

        • @oldfart@lemm.ee
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          610 days ago

          I never used one tbh. Last time I used something WebGL was when its tech demo was released.

          Of course all of these have uses, that’s why they exist. I just find these use cases very rare/exotic compared to viewing a video with subs.

          • @AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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            510 days ago

            A lot of people play online games. They aren’t exactly rare.

            Something that is actually a lot less used (and probably a lot of effort to maintain as well) is webxr. It’s a cool technology but not very useful right now (although I could imagine it becoming more important in the future)

    • @WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      maybe the plugin system wasn’t that bad of a concept for video players and such, but it should be more limited and especially secured in any way possible

    • @drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 days ago

      Support for this feature would lessen the need for such players though, and anything that lessens the amount of JavaScript in the world is an objective moral good.

      • @HyperfocusSurfer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        110 days ago

        Fair, although AFAIK we’d also need native hls support (outside safari) since it’s quite commonly used as well. Although, that info might be outdated

      • @Rin@lemm.ee
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        110 days ago

        honestly, if it wasn’t so piss easy to write, i wouldn’t use it at all

  • y0din
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    11 days ago

    Subtitles are not always simple text files in the source. They can come in various formats like SRT, WebVTT, Teletext, and VobSub—if they are present at all.

    To integrate them into WebM, you must first determine if they exist, ensure they have the correct language tags (and tag them properly if they don’t), then extract them, convert them into a format compatible with the player, and finally remux them alongside the video and audio. This process can easily fail in an automated workflow if any of these conditions are unmet or if the subtitle format is incompatible.

    Given this complexity, it’s understandable why many choose to avoid the effort rather than addressing whether WebM supports subtitles.

    I am not defending anyone, but the process of it all makes it understandable, at least for me.

  • @Scoopta@programming.dev
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    11 days ago

    Unrelated to the question but I don’t believe webm(matroska) is based on RIFF, webp is but that’s separate.

  • @Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    I can’t think of an occasion where I’ve been listening to something online and wanted tracks - everything that would benefit from having them, I would prefer to download and run via VLC anyways. I think there just isn’t any demand for the switch, and it would break a lot of legacy tools (like auto-transcription bots) to switch, much as .webp has.