Met with Phil, Matt, & Steve. Good meeting! A few notes:

communication:

• They set me up on the VideoJS Slack instance so I can ping with questions as needed; some of them also still hang out on the old IRC channel. They may set up another public channel soon as well.

ogv.js integration:

• for ogv.js integration we may want a combination of a 'tech' *and* a 'source' plugin. 'Source' plugins are new; we would definitely use a source plugin for doing adaptive streaming switching; will look into best way to split things up for ogv.js
  • eg we might want to conceptually split ogv.js into 'canvas/web-audio player' and 'ogg/webm demuxer+decoders'. Or the 'source' might just handle cpu-usage-based resolution switching. Not yet 100% sure, need to research some more.
• they noticed the background tab throttling bug on my demo too. ;) need to improve the timer usage!

adaptive streaming:

• for VP8/VP9 adaptive source switching, there are dash.js and shaka.js-based 'source' plugins
  • shaka probably has better webm/vp9 support.
  • dash.js is notoriously large, but is being refactored to be more modular
  • check into details of dash manifest format & creation... do we need to list the keyframe-to-byte mappings in the manifest etc?
  • need to confirm whether our combined video+audio files will work or if we need to create separate video-only and audio-only streams
• not yet sure if it's possible to hack up dash.js or shaka to talk with ogv.js, or should implement separate adaptive switching for ogv
  • more important to have a reliable CPU-speed-based downratchet/upratchet for ogv.js, rather than network conditions

audio playback

• there is current support for taking an <audio> element and adapting it with videojs skin controls etc
  • but things may assume a poster image still; make sure sizing is correct
• there may be some custom skins aimed at audio-only playback; check out the state of the art

Manual resolution switching

• https://github.com/kmoskwiak/videojs-resolution-switcher appears to be updated for videojs 5

Potential issues with doing popup/overlay (as with our current popup or with MultimediaViewer integration)

• cloning a pristine original <video> from the document into an overlay should work fine as long as we add the videojs setup only after the copy into the overlay
  • this should let us have a basic inline player for no-JS case as well as providing a good player for our zoomed view
• make sure to destroy the instance at end; DOM+JS+event handles doesn't always GC well and may leave stuff

Usage of ES6 vs vanilla JS in plugins?

• either should work
• ES6 easier if we need to extend core classes
• may as well learn the ES6 stuff since will probably end up contributing patches to their core anyway ;)

Crazy future ideas: what if we want hyperlinks in our video?

• they would be interested in a good full-featured plugin supporting that, should we happen to make one in future :D

Encoding/transcoding:

• since Brightcove also happens to run a transcoding business (Zencoder) they would be happy to help us with our transcode problems. ;)
• they're pretty sure they could support us on their end if we can figure out the options on our end -- keep them on the list for looking at ways to do 3rd-party transcoding in future.
  • a good abstraction for transcoding backends would be very useful and allow us to do some testing
  • commoditization of the transcode interface may be key for getting community approval for *any* 3rd-party service