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Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

amazon.science

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Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#221

Post by mhoad »

rat9988 wrote: post #196
mhoad wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I would just argue that the accessibility APIs are currently tied to the DOM and we should fix that.

Accessibility API need a semantic layer that the DOM provide. You can't just make every arbitratry gui accessible. The app developers will have to pay the price (more development time).

I’m only familiar with Flutter which just happens to have a render to Canvas option on the web but they have a full accessibility tree that is designed for exactly that already with zero work from the developer.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#222

Post by IshKebab »

coldtea wrote: post #162
jcelerier wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words don't have any meaning anymore if react (and the HTML DOM) is considered anything close to "immediate mode". For starters the DOM is a declarative thing - immediate mode means that you have a function called for each frame with imperative function calls written by the user of the immediate mode GUI toolkit for rendering each element of the GUI every time (unlike retained mode where a framework hides that behind…

The key point of the comparison is than in React, as in immediate mode, you tell what you want shown every time (for every "frame") as opposed to having references to and controlling instantiated widget objects (an object graph). In React's case, you tell it declaratively (your JSX component tree) with some procedural stuff thrown in (JS parts in the JSX). In classical immediate mode, by calling paint functions. But…

Your own comment makes it pretty clear that React is not immediate mode. Not the immediate mode that everyone understands anyway. Your "traditional immediate" and "react immediate" are just terms you made up.

React is clearly a different thing to immediate mode and retained mode. You don't have to cram everything into those two categories. We could do with a word for it though.

I don't think the guy you linked is a React Dev.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#223

Post by pacificat0r »

dwmbt wrote: post #3

first time i've seen practical wasm system design and the transition written about. that being said, i would really love a deeper dive. the graphics were also insightful -- cheers, alexandru

I'd actually love to do a more in-depth presentation of the internals and how stuff works together. Who knows, maybe in a future post :)

If you have any specific question, I could try to answer it here.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#224

Post by shroompasta »

titzer wrote: post #215
shroompasta wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes off incredibly naive of FE engineering. Buttons and Doodads? sigh. A significant factor as to why Apple has succeeded the past 2 decades is due to the design of their products - from the sleek aluminum bodies of their hardware to the UI/UX of their operating systems. Unless you want your UI to look like something out of 1995, you're going to have to make it look good. Making it look good will require a dec…

I feel the conversation will just cycle if we try to push people to the poles of opinion and insult them. Accidental complexity is an enormous, pervasive problem across all software stacks. The ratio of lines of code to pixels on the screen is pretty bonkers. Since you mention Apple, if you look at the ratio of lines of code per pixel, it's really hard to understand how an OS weighs in at 10GB, even for Apple which i…

Your whole line of comments is equivalent to "No offense, but.." -> proceeds to offend.

Especially with your "buttons and doodads" comment.

I wasn't even trying to get personal, but If you're going to hit, be prepared to take a hit.

------------

Never once has the weight of my OS been a concern for me, and I'm going to make the assumption that is the general case for the majority of users.

Never once have I heard the metric of LOC/pixels.

You say it's bloat. I say its necessity.

It's just keeping up with the times - beautifying and manicuring to attract eyes.

And you failed to address my comment about all the logic that FE engineers have to deal with - which is more of the meat in FE development than what happens skin deep.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#225

Post by Beltalowda »

pjmlp wrote: post #186
franga2000 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I really hope this doesn't become common. By not utilising the DOM, you're killing accessibility, autofill, customization (things like reader mode, automatic dark themes...)... These are things that regular people rely on every day (not just us techies writing userscript a and Stylus themes).

It will definitly be the new common, by killing Flash et all without comparable tooling, while at the same time offering WASM, it was only a matter of time until we had the revenge of plugins. Basically 10 years wasting time to come full circle. https://leaningtech.com/cheerpj https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/ https://opensilver.net/ All of the three major ones are now back, but it is ok, WASM is great!

It's not really a "WASM problem", as such; you can use the DOM from WASM and that works quite well. Similarly, you can do all this kind of graphics drawing with just JS as well.

It's just a choice this framework made. I bet there are actually some real advantages to it, but also disadvantages. I very very much like the customizability of the web, so I'd be very surprised if the advantages would outweigh the problems.

In short, I don't think it's really the same as Flash.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#226

Post by Beltalowda »

labawi wrote: post #160
franga2000 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I really hope this doesn't become common. By not utilising the DOM, you're killing accessibility, autofill, customization (things like reader mode, automatic dark themes...)... These are things that regular people rely on every day (not just us techies writing userscript a and Stylus themes).

Concur. I block wasm and webgl, mostly for security and privacy, so don't use sites that require it. Unfortunately, as I also block trackers, most site operators won't even realize people like me visit their sites.

Does blocking WASM improve privacy? As I understand it, it essentially has the same capabilities as regular JS(?) but I never looked very deeply in to it, so maybe there's some parts I don't know about(?)

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#227

Post by dylan604 »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #213
astrange wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all made of inter prediction + intra prediction + residual coding. There's an evolution from JPEG -> MPEG2 -> MPEG4 part 2 (XviD) -> AVC -> HEVC… where it gets more complicated over time but that's still the structure. There's also alternative ideas like wavelets (JPEG2000) and many other minor silly ideas; almost all of them are bad and can be ignored. Which is not to say the MPEG codecs are perfect. ML people…

All noted. I’ll look up the items I don’t know. Thanks. And yeah, I didn’t mean blackbox like ML. I meant like H.264/H.265. Blackbox isn’t the right term.

There are many writeup/blogs about people's experience using these codecs, and typically, I roll my eyes at just another releasing the same info. However, for someone like you, being one of the lucky 10000 TIL types, you're their target audience.

The best way to learn is to just keep encoding. Take a source file and make an output that looks good. Compare things like its filesize, macroblocking, mosquito noise levels, etc. There are PSNR and other similar type tests that will compare your output back to the original. See if you can then tweak any of the settings to improve the PSNR score without increasing the bit rate. Then, keep decreasing the bitrate to see what things you can get away with before it becomes unacceptable. You can spend a lot of time going frame by frame comparisons, but remember, 99.99999% of viewers will ever only see it in full speed playback, so don't forget to take that into consideration. Look for obvious banding from gradients. Does a 10bit encode vs 8bit improve that? Is it worth the limits from some players not being able to use 10bit? How does frame size vs bitrate affect the quality of your file?

Doing enough of these tests, you'll start to get specific questions. Those will have more easily found answers.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#228

Post by [deleted] »

titzer wrote: post #215
shroompasta wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes off incredibly naive of FE engineering. Buttons and Doodads? sigh. A significant factor as to why Apple has succeeded the past 2 decades is due to the design of their products - from the sleek aluminum bodies of their hardware to the UI/UX of their operating systems. Unless you want your UI to look like something out of 1995, you're going to have to make it look good. Making it look good will require a dec…

I feel the conversation will just cycle if we try to push people to the poles of opinion and insult them. Accidental complexity is an enormous, pervasive problem across all software stacks. The ratio of lines of code to pixels on the screen is pretty bonkers. Since you mention Apple, if you look at the ratio of lines of code per pixel, it's really hard to understand how an OS weighs in at 10GB, even for Apple which i…

[deleted]

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#229

Post by remus »

nofunsir wrote: post #117
remus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important not to conflate churn with fast updates. In it's essence the ability to deliver updates quickly (in this case by downloading a blob of wasm+js each time the app is started) is a great thing imo, as you eliminate a huge chunk of problems around delivering updates and clients on old versions. For 99% of users this is a huge win. You can obviously abuse this by redesigning the UI every 6 weeks but…

I'm of the strong opinion that there simply does not exist, as you say, 'a huge chunk of problems around delivering updates and clients on old versions.' It's certainly not a win for users, but for lazy developers. Good software engineers are much more than fast-churn developers. In fact, they are different people.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I just don't see barriers in getting updates out to people as a good thing.

It seems your argument is that it encourages developers to be sloppy, but in practice I think it just ends up as a net loss for users as the average user just isn't interested in updating software, however critical the bugs in their current version. Maybe I'm different from the average user, but for me the fact that chrome has gone through 90+ versions over 10+ years without me having to think about it is great (and, I suspect, strongly correlated to the relative lack of security issues over the years despite it having a huge surface area).

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#230

Post by sharken »

chaosite wrote: post #206
sharken wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime 4K is nice, but if you have a decent sound system with Atmos, then Amazon Prime is not the place. Apple TV has been the best platform so far for 4K and Atmos content, if you also want an option to purchase a title. https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/everything-on-amazon...

If you have a fancy 4K TV and a decent sound system with Atmos which you want to take advantage of then you really should be buying physical media instead of streaming... I mean, if you went beyond having a sound bar, and ran wires for surround speakers with a proper home theater amplifier. Streaming platform usually only give you 5.1 on EAC3 (DD+), on UHD Blu-rays you get 7.1 over TrueHD, and then you get Atmos on t…

Very true, but frankly it's a hassle to deal with discs in this digital age.

Some soundbars such as Samsung Q950T/Q950A send the sound to all speakers either 9.1.4 or 11.1.4 respectively.

But you are quite right that discs offer the best quality.

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