HTMLMediaElement latencyHint

The latencyHint attribute gives web authors influence over how much decoded output must be buffered for a user agent to begin playback or resume following a seek. The most obvious use cases would request lower latency. For certain applications, prioritizing smoothness over latency makes the wrong trade off. Examples include interactive video applications like cloud gaming and desktop streaming, where users must immediately see the effect of their inputs.

In the other direction, some sites may prefer latency to be higher than the UA default. For example, the non-real-time video use-cases mentioned earlier (movies, tv, vlogging, ...) may choose values like 300 or 500 msec to reduce the chance of decoder stalls.

Documentation

• https://discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-hint-attribute-on-htmlmediaelement-to-configure-rendering-latency/3567

Specification

Public discussion

Status in Chromium

Blink components: Blink>Media

Proposed (tracking bug)

Consensus & Standardization

• Firefox: Public support
• Edge: Public support
• Safari: Mixed public signals
• Web Developers: Strongly positive

Owner

• chcunningham@chromium.org

Last updated on 2019-10-29