873959 - Create an API for generating thumbnails for HTML videos

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Description

[cajbir (:cajbir)]

We should provide an API specific for generating thumbnail/preview images for videos. 

On Firefox OS we have the issue that thumbnail generation uses the existing API's to copying a video frame to a canvas then obtaining the image from that canvas.

This has the following issues:

1) The video defaults to using the hardware decoder which cannot get access to the pixel data on some devices (See bug 866028 comment 10).
2) The code to implement creating the video element, seeking to a certain point and obtaining the data is relatively complex, having to deal with a number of events and APIs.
3) The decoding will load the media resource and decode audio as well as video unnecessarily.

After some discussion (see bug 866028 comment 16) it was considered to create an API specific for video thumbnail generation. It can be optimized to not use the hardware decoder and find the largest keyframe for the thumbnail image (or some other specific algorithm).

Comment 1

[Nils Ohlmeier [:drno]]

Mass closing do to inactivity.
Feel free to re-open if still needed.