Next Steps

HTML5 video solutions

August 17, 2010 @ 3:33pm

Updated — August 20, 2010 @ 8:23am

by Jeff Byrnes

So everybody’s excited about HTML5, and the native media capabilities it brings; specifically the <video> tag. But at the moment, support is a bit tricky. To quickly reiterate:

Safari 3.0+ supports H.264 video & AAC audio in an MP4 container
Firefox 3.5+ supports Theora video & Vorbis audio in an Ogg container, or WebM (VP8 video & Vorbis audio in a Matroska container.)
Chrome 3.0+ supports both H.264 & AAC in an MP4 container as well as Theora & Vorbis in an Ogg container.
iOS & Android support H.264 & AAC audio in an MP4 container.
Opera 10.5+ supports Theora video & Vorbis audio in an Ogg container.
IE9 will support both H.264 & AAC in an MP4 container as well as Theora & Vorbis in an Ogg container, but IE8 and earlier have no support for HTML5 video, and must rely on Flash.

So, as you can see, things are all over the place. To properly implement HTML5 video, we need to supply two video files: one file encoded with H.264/AAC contained in an MP4, and another encoded with Theora/Vorbis contained in an Ogg. It would also be wise to create a WebM version of your video as well, to future-proof yourself for the day when Theora is deprecated completely.

Now, once you’ve got your video files encoded, the matter of embedding them correctly raises its ugly head. Thankfully, there are a few ready-to-go solutions for this.

First up is Video for Everybody, created by Kroc Camen. VfE serves up HTML5 video (MP4 and either Ogg or WebM) without JavaScript. This is the very first solution put forth for easy HTML5 video support, and, as Kroc himself writes, should in no way be considered a long-term solution. But he’s being very forward-looking, and not very generous with his work. The primary goal with this player is to use no JavaScript, and thus make it as widely compatible as possible (think RSS readers & other JS-disabled avenues.)

Next, we’ve got Video JS, which, true to its name, relies on JS. However, unlike VfE, the controls are consistent between platforms, which is definitely a marked improvement.

The third and, in my opinion, most promising ready-made solution for HTML5 video is SublimeVideo by the gurus over at Jilion. This is a player with not only a consistent UI, but tons of additional features, a full-window mode (and a full-screen version in Safari!), and it’s being neatly packaged up. Unlike the other two, however, it’s still in-progress, and it will only be free for non-commercial use.

So there you have it folks; some readymade HTML5 video solutions; enjoy!