I am looking at adding html5 <video> support to a website.
It looks like it is going to be pretty complicated. The basic idea is to use the html5 <video> tag and have a fallback Flash player.
So here is the problem: which codec do you choose?
Ogg - Not supported by IE but not supported by Flash either, so can’t use it
H264 - Not supported by IE but falls back to the Flash player which is fine. Not supported by Firefox, but Firefox won’t fall back to the Flash player if it encounters a video it cannot support.
WebM - little browser support currently, but it seems this is what all the browser vendors are heading towards supporting. Can’t seem to find any information about it being supported in Flash however.
This is distributed software so I have to make it as easy to use as possible. For example, uploading multiple copies of the video encoded with different codecs is not a possibility.
Last week one of our client requested to add HTML5 video, we had to use 2-3 differect players for different browsers and handling all those players and their respective file format was just an awful experience. May be it was our technical limitation and there is any better solution available but all that we did has forced us not to even think again about using HTML5 video player.
I’d say just stick with swfobject and a flash-based video player. At least with that, you only have to build/code/render everything once.
HTML5 media capabilities are interesting, but with the video format war going on between browsers, it’s not a prudent thing to implement as a permanent solution just yet.
I’m skipping this whole HTML5 video disaster and just using h264 with Flash and/or Silverlight. No point in messing with different video formats and browsers. Plus the Flash/Silverlight stuff can actually be made full screen. OMG!!!1111eleven. I’m being serious about the full screen. They saw it fit for some stupid reason that video should not be capable of full screen. I do not know what they are thinking with HTML5, but no full screen on videos? Thats just stupid.
Silverlight can be full screen and still leave everything accessible on a dual monitor setup! Awesome!
The thing that has triggered me to add video support is that a customer wants to use video on an iPad. Which means no Flash. The <video> tag seemed ideal.