Media & Entertainment (original) (raw)

The web has transformed media consumption

The Open Web Platform has been the driver of the transformation of the media industry. The <audio> and <video> elements form the backbone of media streaming experiences on the web and have revolutionized media consumption worldwide.

Key stakeholders do media standardization at W3C to shape how media technologies on the web evolve, set the direction in which technological progress is made, reinforce core media technologies, create an interoperable ecosystem and build the future of media experiences.

Who influences how media technologies on the web evolve?

What's next for media and entertainment on the Web?

Active groups

The groups are listed alphabetically by Working Group, then Interest Group, then Community Group. These groups are designed to reinforce core media technologies on the web, create an interoperable ecosystem and build the future of media experiences.

AudioWorking group

The mission of the Audio Working Group is to add advanced sound and music synthesis capabilities to the Open Web Platform.Visit the Audio Working Group

GPU for the WebWorking group

The mission of the GPU for the Web Working Group is to provide an interface between the Web Platform and modern 3D graphics and computation capabilities present on native system platforms.Visit the GPU for the Web Working Group

Immersive WebWorking group

The mission of the Immersive Web Working Group is to help bring high-performance Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) (collectively known as XR) to the open Web via APIs to interact with XR devices and sensors in browsers.Visit the Immersive Web Working Group

MediaWorking group

The mission of the Media Working Group is to develop and improve client-side media processing and playback features on the Web.Visit the Media Working Group

Second ScreenWorking group

The mission of the Second Screen Working Group is to provide specifications that enable web pages to use secondary screens to display web content.Visit the Second Screen Working Group

Timed TextWorking group

The mission of the Timed Text Working Group is to develop W3C Recommendations for media online captioning by developing and maintaining new versions of the Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) and WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) based on implementation experience and interoperability feedback, and the creation of semantic mappings between those languages.Visit the Timed Text Working Group

Web Real-Time CommunicationsWorking group

The mission of the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group is to define client-side APIs to enable Real-Time Communications in Web browsers. These APIs should enable building applications that can be run inside a browser, requiring no extra downloads or plugins, that allow communication between parties using audio, video, and supplementary real-time communication, without having to use intervening servers (unless needed for firewall traversal, or for providing intermediary services). APIs enabling supplementary functions, such as recording, image capture, and screen sharing are also in scope.Visit the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group

WebTransportWorking group

The mission of the WebTransport Working Group is to develop APIs that enable data transfer between browsers and servers with support for multiple data flows, unidirectional data flows, out-of-order delivery, variable reliability and pluggable protocols.Visit the WebTransport Working Group

Media and EntertainmentInterest group

The mission of the Media and Entertainment Interest Group is to provide a forum for media-related technical discussions to track progress of media features on the Web within W3C groups and use of Web technologies by external organizations, and to identify use cases and requirements that existing and/or new specifications need to meet to achieve a tighter support of media services on the Web.Visit the Media and Entertainment Interest Group

Audiovisual Media Formats for BrowsersCommunity group

Over the past decade, a growing number of sound and imaging media formats have been established offering increasingly sophisticated user experiences such as High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Spatial Audio. On the imaging side, these media formats provide the technical means to facilitate increased spatial and temporal resolutions, higher bit depths, as well as varying color volumes and the mapping between them. Similarly, on the audio side, higher bit-depth, sample rates and more immersive surround sound and speech processing options are available. These experiences are facilitated through tools and technical mechanisms available to both professional and consumer content providers and are readily available for linear content types. However, options to provide such experiences through the web are still limited as potential solutions are fragmented and often insular or significantly limited in capabilities among open source as well as proprietary options. This typically results in incorrect presentation to an end user or even error messages. Therefore, there is need to consider how to support modern audiovisual formats in a W3C context. To alleviate friction in development and deployment, it seems highly beneficial to our community to synchronize open and proprietary solutions so that they can co-exist within a W3C framework. The scope of this community group is to provide a forum for those discussions.Visit the Audiovisual Media Formats for Browsers Community Group

Color on the WebCommunity group

Discussion forum between CSS experts, Color Management experts, and TV/Movie/Broadcast experts to explore use cases and inform W3C specification work (such as CSS Color 4 and subsequent levels). Both SDR and HDR are in scope. Wide gamut displays and the Web is in scope. Web use of ICC (v.4 and ICCMax) is in scope.

Current Charter

Visit the Color on the Web Community Group

GamesCommunity group

The goal of the Games Community Group is to improve the quality of open web standards that games developers rely on to create games. To achieve its goal, the Games community group will:

The Games community group will not develop any normative specification. As such, there will not be any Essential Claims under the W3C Contributor License Agreement or Final Specification Agreement.

Please see the adopted charter for details.

Visit the Games Community Group

Immersive CaptionsCommunity group

The goal of this community group is to determine and publish best practices for access, activation, and display settings for captions with different types of Immersive Media - AR, VR & Games. We plan to research current examples, identify best practices, and do research on those ideas over different surfaces: Smartphone AR, AR glasses, VR goggles, etc. Where appropriate, we will share our results and discuss opportunities with the TTML WG (recommendations for media online captioning) and the W3C Immersive Web WG (APIs to interact with XR devices and sensors in browsers).Visit the Immersive Captions Community Group

Web Media APICommunity group

Media web application developers want to deploy their content on a wide and heterogeneous range of devices and platforms, e.g. televisions, set-top boxes, and mobile devices. To ensure a smooth user experience across devices, these user agents need to support a minimum set of Web technologies that developers can rely on being supported. This Community Group plans to specify such a set of Web technologies and additionally plans to provide guidance for developers and implementers e.g. on performance constraints and portability issues.

See the CG charter for more information.

Visit the Web Media API Community Group

Why join?

Since 1994, we have been leading the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth of the web.

By joining these groups, you have the ability to discuss and drive the standards produced by W3C. The conversations occurring in the groups concern both current and future standards, constantly aiming to make the web a better place. You have the ability to take part in guiding the future of the web.

Our values revolve around building the web for all

The social value of the web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.

Recent activities in the Media & Entertainment community

Find out more via recent stories, news, workshops, talks or events.

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Our Media & Entertainment evangelists