[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #31177: Captions video not saved with the post and are lost on attachment page

[WordPress Trac]

#31177: Captions video not saved with the post and are lost on attachment page
--------------------------+--------------------------------
 Reporter:  rianrietveld  |       Owner:  rianrietveld
     Type:  defect (bug)  |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal        |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Media         |     Version:  4.1
 Severity:  major         |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch   |     Focuses:  ui, accessibility
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Changes (by postphotos):

 * severity:  normal => major


Comment:

 '''a) My biggest frustration is that at any kind of scale it's hard to
 manage this kind of media.'''  Even having but more than 1 video or 1
 subtitle means it's possible to get the wrong video and wrong subtitle to
 line up.

 Currently, videos in WordPress can use captions or subtitles only on
 output: While writing a shortcode (for Classic Editor) it must be
 contained and listed in the output:

 `[video width="320" height="176" mp4="http://example.com/wp-
 content/uploads/2017/12/jellies.mp4"]`
 `   <track srclang="en" label="English" kind="subtitles"
 src="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/jellies.srt" />`
 `[/video]`


 This feels very messy and error-prone.

 A better use (in shortcode) would look like:
 `[video width="320" height="176" mp4="http://example.com/wp-
 content/uploads/2017/12/jellies.mp4" subtitle="yes" /]`
 or
 `[video width="320" height="176" mp4="http://example.com/wp-
 content/uploads/2017/12/jellies.mp4" subtitles="en ES-mx" /]`
 or
 `[video width="320" height="176" mp4="http://example.com/wp-
 content/uploads/2017/12/jellies.mp4" caption="no" /]`
 Depending on usage, of course. I've used `subtitle`, `caption` and
 `subtitles` interchangeably here because that's how people talk about the
 synced moving words to video and they're ''almost'' the same thing, and
 are, for our purposes.

 '''b) A standard way using the above examples to make it easier for
 content authors would be to use file name matching.''' If the video is
 called `jellies.mp4`, make it so that, by default (and if uploaded
 together), `jellies.srt` or `jellies.vtt` is associated with that video.

 Further, if it has a language suffix - `jellies-en.srt` or `jellies-es-
 mx.srt` - and it's uploaded at the same time, associate them all together.

 '''c) It goes without saying this would also affect Gutenberg's output of
 videos, too.'''

 '''d) I think we can solve this with data architecture.''' I think the
 problem that the roadblocks to reusing a gallery - like "Mark and Diane
 get Married, 2014" - have almost the data concept here. In any case, we
 have associated media files who belong to each other and we should have
 some central way to relate them to each other, through `meta` or some
 other means.

 Further, if you upload multiple video formats (`webm`, `mp4`, etc.) or
 audio formats for that matter (`aac`, `mp3`, `wav`, etc.) or images (think
 `srcset` but with manually defined files) as outlined above in b), a media
 object could have multiple URLs for different purposes, but they'd all be
 ''that'' object and it wouldn't have to be so messy. The only way I see a)
 happening elegantly is for this shift.

 I would love to hear what @joemcgill thinks on this, and to see if it's
 even possible. While my primary objective here is to make video subtitles
 more useful, but I see this a deeper problem that could be solved with a
 architecture adjustment, especially as Gutenberg starts to introduce a
 wider concept of "Reusable Blocks" than can solve this. If not, content
 downstream is only going to get messier when it doesn't have to be
 anymore.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/31177#comment:12>
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