This specification extends {{MediaStreamTrack}} to provide an optional hint about the user's preference on how the media should be treated when insufficient resources for perfect reproduction are available.

This optional hint permits {{MediaStreamTrack}} sinks such as RTCPeerConnection (defined in [[webrtc]]) or MediaRecorder (defined in [[mediastream-recording]]) that process a track's audio or video content to choose processing parameters that are appropriate to the user's preferences.

Introduction

Algorithms used for processing speech and music differ greatly. Echo-cancellation algorithms developed for speech-type content might not work well on music, and noise-suppression algorithms might remove drum snares or other "noisy" content. While this makes speech more intelligible it is less appropriate for music signals.

For video, webcam content often require denoising and is often intelligible even when downscaled or with high quantization levels. Screencast content of presentations or webpages with a lot of text content is completely unintelligible if the quantization levels are too high or if the content is downscaled or otherwise blurry.

Without automatic detection of media content, a {{MediaStreamTrack}} consumer can only make an educated guess. This guess may be based on assuming that screencast content, such as chrome.desktopCapture, contains text content and must use low quantization levels, and drop frames extensively to meet bitrate requirements. Another assumption is that regular USB video devices provide webcam video, and higher quantization levels and downscaling are acceptible.

While usually appropriate this educated guess leads to sub-optimal settings when incorrect. This manifests as high framedropping when screencasting high-motion content such as a movie or streaming a video game and treating it as text. Treating highly-detailed content as regular webcam video on the other hand leads to too-blurry content when being either quantized or downscaled beyond readability to meet bitrate requirements. This mismatch may also happen when HDMI video-capture cards are seen as USB webcams but actually screencast webpage text.

Lost text intelligibility when downscaling.
While downscaling can be done to preserve motion in low-bitrate scenarios, this example illustrates lost text intelligibility when incorrectly applied to detailed content. Example shows 100%, 50% and 25% cubic downscale corresponding to downscaling from HD to VGA and QVGA resolutions respectively.

In some cases the web application can make a more-educated guess or take user input to inform consumers of what kind of content is being encoded. A web application that streams video-game content would be able to preserve motion from desktop capture at the cost of individual frame detail. A music-studio application would be able to prevent noise suppression from removing snares from a music track.

These settings are not intended to replace encoder-level settings completely but rather complement them with a simpler hint that does not require broad knowledge of video encoders, audio-processing steps or more extensive tuning.

A separate section of this specification describes expected behavior for specific components that process a MediaStreamTrack.

Terminology

The terms RTCRtpSender and RTCRtpSendParameters are defined in [[!WEBRTC]].

Extension to MediaStreamTrack

    partial interface MediaStreamTrack {
      attribute DOMString contentHint;
    };
    

This specification extends {{MediaStreamTrack}} and makes use of its {{MediaStreamTrack/kind}} attribute as defined in [[GETUSERMEDIA]].

Each {{MediaStreamTrack}} has an associated application-set content hint, which is initially "", signifying unset. This application-set content hint corresponds to the contentHint attribute of {{MediaStreamTrack}} which may be used by the web application to provide a hint of what type of content is contained within the track, to guide how it should be treated by {{MediaStreamTrack}} consumers.

Valid values for the application-set content hint are dependent on the {{MediaStreamTrack/kind}} of {{MediaStreamTrack}} contained. On setting contentHint to value,

  1. If this {{MediaStreamTrack}}'s {{MediaStreamTrack/kind}} attribute is "audio", and value is not one of "", "speech", "speech-recognition", or "music", abort these steps.
  2. If this {{MediaStreamTrack}}'s {{MediaStreamTrack/kind}} attribute is "video", and value is not one of "", "motion", "detail" or "text", abort these steps.
  3. Set this {{MediaStreamTrack}}'s application-set content hint to value.
  4. The implementation should adapt its decision on how to handle the content of this {{MediaStreamTrack}} according to the new value of its application-set content hint. This adaptation should happen as quickly as reasonable, e.g. within the next couple of captured video frames or audio buffers.

On getting {{MediaStreamTrack/contentHint}},

  1. Return this {{MediaStreamTrack}}'s [=application-set content hint=].

Note that the initial value of application-set content hints is "", corresponding to that no hint has been provided. It does not default to the implementation's best guess of contained type of content.

Audio Content Hints

Audio content hints are only applicable when the {{MediaStreamTrack}} contains an audio track.

Audio content hints
""

No hint has been provided, the implementation should make its best-informed guess on how to handle contained audio data. This may be inferred from how the track was opened or by doing content analysis.

"speech"

The track should be treated as if it contains speech data. Consuming this signal it may be appropriate to apply noise suppression or boost intelligibility of the incoming signal.

"speech-recognition"

The track should be treated as if it contains data for the purpose of speech recognition by a machine. Consuming this signal it may be appropriate to boost intelligibility of the incoming signal for transcription and turn off audio-processing components that are used for human consumption.

"music"

The track should be treated as if it contains music data. Generally this might imply tuning or turning off audio-processing components that are used to process speech data to prevent the audio from being distorted.

Video Content Hints

Video content hints are only applicable when the {{MediaStreamTrack}} contains a video track.

Video content hints
""

No hint has been provided, the implementation should make its best-informed guess on how contained video content should be treated. This can for example be inferred from how the track was opened or by doing content analysis.

"motion"

The track should be treated as if it contains video where motion is important. This is normally webcam video, movies or video games. Quantization artefacts and downscaling are acceptible in order to preserve motion as well as possible while still retaining target bitrates. During low bitrates when compromises have to be made, more effort is spent on preserving frame rate than edge quality and details.

"detail"

The track should be treated as if video details are extra important. This is generally applicable to presentations or web pages with text content, painting or line art. This setting would normally optimize for detail in the resulting individual frames rather than smooth playback. Artefacts from quantization or downscaling that make small text or line art unintelligible should be avoided.

"text"

The track should be treated as if video details are extra important, and that significant sharp edges and areas of consistent color can occur frequently. This is generally applicable to presentations or web pages with text content. This setting would normally optimize for detail in the resulting individual frames rather than smooth playback, and may take advantage of encoder tools that optimize for text rendering. Artefacts from quantization or downscaling that make small text or line art unintelligible should be avoided.

Behaviors of other components based on content-hint

Behavior of a MediaStreamTrack

When setting a {{MediaStreamTrack/contentHint}} value for a {{MediaStreamTrack}}, the UA MUST apply a default as follows:

To apply a default to the constraint c with value t, perform the following steps:

Whenever the "apply constraints" algorithm is subsequently run, the UA MUST choose the remembered value t if it is now a permitted value.

When setting a {{MediaStreamTrack/contentHint}} value of "", all remembered values of t are removed.

Degradation preference when encoding

When encoding video, and some constraint (bandwidth, CPU) prevents encoding at the configured framerate and resolution, the encoder must make a choice on how to modify the encoding parameters.

This section defines terms to describe the choice, and an enum that can be used to indicate that choice in an API.

enum RTCDegradationPreference {
  "maintain-framerate",
  "maintain-resolution",
  "balanced"
};
{{RTCDegradationPreference}} Enumeration description
maintain-framerate

Degrade resolution in order to maintain framerate.

maintain-resolution

Degrade framerate in order to maintain resolution.

balanced

Degrade a balance of framerate and resolution.

An attribute is defined for {{RTCRtpSendParameters}} that allows this to be explicitly indicated for an {{RTCRtpSender}}:
partial dictionary RTCRtpSendParameters {
        RTCDegradationPreference degradationPreference;
       };

Dictionary {{RTCRtpSendParameters}} New Members

degradationPreference of type {{RTCDegradationPreference}}.

When bandwidth is constrained and the {{RTCRtpSender}} needs to choose between degrading resolution or degrading framerate, {{RTCRtpSendParameters/degradationPreference}} indicates which is preferred.

Behavior of an RTCPeerConnection

An {{RTCRtpSender}} transmitting a {{MediaStreamTrack}} for which a {{MediaStreamTrack/contentHint}} attribute has been set MUST use the following degradation preferences, unless an explicit {{RTCRtpSendParameters/degradationPreference}} attribute has been set in the sender's parameters:

Behavior of a MediaStreamRecorder

For a video track with the attribute value "text", if the encoding codec is AV1, activate encoding tools for "text" mode.

Security and Privacy Considerations

This specification adds an API where the user can send information to the user agent. This information is not communicated elsewhere, and is not stored in any permanent location.

By probing this API, the client may get some information on how the user agent implements this specification, which may give some insight into its configuration. Apart from this, no user agent information or data is exposed to the client through this API, and the API does not give any access to browser UI, influence over the user agent's security characteristics or the generation of temporary identifiers.

This API does not distinguish between first-party, third-party or incognito contexts; it behaves identically in all these cases.

No personally identifiable or otherwise sensitive information is handled via the use of this API.