Is there a reliable way to time javascript animations with an audio file playing in the browser?

For example, I want the page to play an audio file while at the same time have some bullets slide into view at just the right moment that said bullet is talked about in the audio file. A similar effect would also be used for closed captioning. When I say reliable I mean specifically that the timing will be consistent across many common platforms (browser/OS/CPU/etc) as well as consistent in different sessions on the same platform (they hit refresh, it works again just as it did before, etc).

NOTE: It's OK if the answer is 'NO', but please include at least a little quip abo开发者_JAVA技巧ut why that is.

Check out this animation, which synchronizes a 3D SVG effect to an audio file.

The technique is explained in a blog post at http://mrdoob.com/blog/page/3. Look for the one entitled "svg tag+audio tag = 3D waveform". The key is to create a table of volume values corresponding to the audio file.

You'll obviously have some work to do in studying this example and the Javascript it uses to adapt it to your scenario. And it will probably only work in browsers that support HTML5.

Given the current situation and HTML5 support, I would solve this using Flash.