Video rich snippet: when to use <span> and when <meta>? - rich-snippets

Question

I see all kinds of examples of video rich snippet code. What I don't understand is that sometimes people use tags and sometimes tags to markup the same thing.
Is there some kind of rule or meaning? Is the outcome different depending on what I use?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Take below for example. Say I want to include metadata for items that are not rendered to the viewer. Such as tue-thur of the opening hours they go into meta tags. Notice that they are still wrapped in the parent span as the tags for mon and fri which are rendered to the viewer. This makes all five days into one item.
These and the geo cords tags near the bottom are easy examples to try out in Google's Rich Snippet Tool to see the differences in the way the tags are interpreted depending on the way they are nested.
<span itemprop="hasPOS">
<span itemprop="contactPoint" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ContactPoint">
<i class="icon-phone blue"></i>303-948-2988
</span><br>
<span itemprop="address" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">7921 S. Platte Canyon Rd</span><br>
<span itemprop="addressLocality" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/City">
<span itemprop="name">Littleton,</span>
</span>
<span itemprop="addressRegion" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/State">
<span itemprop="name">Colorado</span>
</span><br>
<span itemprop="postalCode">80128</span>
</span><br>
<span itemprop="openingHours" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/OpeningHoursSpecification">
<span itemprop="dayOfWeek">
<span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/DayOfWeek/Monday">Monday</span>
</span>-
<span itemprop="dayOfWeek">
<span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/DayOfWeek/Friday">Friday</span>
</span>7am - 6pm
<meta itemprop="dayOfWeek" itemtype="http://schema.org/DayOfWeek/Tuesday" content="Tuesday" />
<meta itemprop="dayOfWeek" itemtype="http://schema.org/DayOfWeek/Wednesday" content="Wednesday" />
<meta itemprop="dayOfWeek" itemtype="http://schema.org/DayOfWeek/Thursday" content="Thursday" />
<meta itemprop="opens" itemtype="http://schema.org/Time" content="19:00:00Z-06:00" />
<meta itemprop="closes" itemtype="http://schema.org/Time" content="08:00:00Z-06:00" />
</span>
<span itemprop="geo" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates">
<meta itemprop="latitude" content="39.572216" />
<meta itemprop="longitude" content="-105.056745" />
</span>
</span>