Support for Video Thumbnails

[rig-0]

Summary

Support for Video Thumbnails (storing and retrieving)

Abstract

We (the Mobile Team) would like to see the spec support thumbnails for Video objects. If it is not included in the response, then it becomes the responsibility of all clients to implement thumbnail generation client-side, and this can be expensive (when scrolling through a grid of video thumbnails). Another consequence of client-side generation is that video thumbnails can be different app to app, platform to platform. We already generate video thumbnails before we submit posts, and can easily support uploading and submitting these urls as part of the Video Content Attachment request.

Specification

Potential sample spec that includes thumbnail:

  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "type": "Note",
  "attachments": [
    {
      "type": "Video",
      "name": "One of the founders of DSNP",
      "duration": "PT10M32S",
      "url": [
        {
          "type": "Link",
          "href": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Big_Buck_Bunny_4K.webm",
          "width": 4000,
          "height": 2250,
          "mediaType": "video/webm",
          "hash": {
            "algorithm": "keccak256",
            "value": "0xf841950dfcedc968dbd63132da844b9f28faea3dbfd4cf326b3831b419a20e9a"
          }
        }
      ],
      "thumbnail": [
        {
          "type": "Image",
          "href": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Mccourt.jpg",
          "width": 350,
          "height": 228,
          "mediaType": "image/jpg"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "published": "1970-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

(source: https://spec.dsnp.org/ActivityContent/Associated/Attachments#video )

FWIW: Here is YT API spec for Videos: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/videos

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

[sebdomdev]

An additional benefit would be that users (that post a video) can choose the thumbnail themselves. This allows users (that see the post) to get a better impression of what the video is about.