I figured it would be like flash. No flash? Then show alt content. So I figured if the browser couldn’t play the file, or locate it, or other, then it would show the alt content. That is not the case. In order for the browser to show the alt content it has to completely have no idea what the video tag is. Then it shows the alt content. But if the file is missing, corrupt, or the browser can’t render it, it will first show the poster attribute, and if there is no poster, then it shows a blank white screen - but still gives you the play button. How wonkers is that???
So for instance my video is in a nice lightbox with pretty borders. I want to give it the alt content to download the file instead. Now if I want to do that I have to include the download links outside the video tag and always display under the video regardless. I don’t like it at all. The video alt content is largely pointless if inside the video tag. Or at the very least very limited. Limited to old browsers. It protects zero against wrongly encoded video. Or even correctly encoded video and poor (or dated) decoding devices.
What you are saying males no sense. The <video> tag wraps around the alternative content and the <source> tags.
That alternative content can be an <object> tag to attach flash if the video tag isn’t supported with the object tag itself wrapped around alternative content for when neither the video tag nor flash is supported.
For example:
<video width="300" height="200" poster="movie.jpg" controls>
<source src='movie.mp4'
type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.4D401E, mp4a.40.2"'>
<source src='movie.webm'
type='video/webm; codecs="vp8.0, vorbis"'>
<source src='movie.ogv' type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"'>
<object data="flashmovie.swf" width="300" height="200" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param name="src" value="flashmovie.swf">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF">
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">
<param name="pluginurl"
value="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">
<p>Fallback content for browsers that don't support either video or flash goes here.</p>
</object>
</video>
I know. Refer to my post though. It doesn’t show up. Test it. Remove all the source tags. keep the video tag and alt paragraph. You will be presented with a white screen and a play button.
Now change the video tag to xideo. note the x. Now the alt shows up. So the browser has to have no idea what the tag is. So it’s only for old browsers. Not un supported video codecs, encoding, or other.
Exactly. It is for browsers that don’t understand the video tag.
Since all browsers that do support the video tag understand at least one of the three video formats you should be including you should always have the video show when the browser understands the video tag - unless you get the source tags in the wrong order.
Ya true. But I like the idea of safe guarding for encoding errors as well. I just spent the last 4 days (no joke lol) Reading and watching handbrake tutorials on the best way to encode MP4. Strangely enough there was no source I found that hit all aspects of the newest handbrake in Mac. And the more simple programs desaturated my video. All except handbrake. You start reading about h.264 profile and level and its real easy to make your video un playable in many devices that support video tag. Handbrake is made more for encoding things for yourself - not for the masses. They need a html5 preset bad. Otherwise you end up like me having to read for days.
There will probably be one by the time HTML5 actually becomes a standard and it is confirmed which of the tags are being added and which didn’t make the cut.
Miro has zero quality settings. The webm turned out nice. It desaturated the mp4. And the ogg was completely unacceptable quality. So miro for webm. Handbrake for mp4/mv4. And cloudconvert.org for ogv and swf.