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it is easy to agree that this is going to make implementation of the video tag by web developers more difficult and less likely to happen in the next couple of years

orly? That's the simplest way I know if, seems to me it doesn't get easier than no-js HTML. FFmpeg is drop-dead easy to encode with, at least for those who can read.

Wow, Adobe has created a wheel once again. And WTF is a widget browser? At first I thought this is what Adobe calls vim, but changed my mind after seeing key phrases: "AIR", "CPU burning", "can't code without IDE".

I think I should mention the Camen Design project as it was first and quite reasonable.

Video for Everybody is simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a video into a website using the HTML5 <video> element, falling back to Flash automatically, without the use of JavaScript or browser-sniffing. It therefore works in RSS readers (no JavaScript), on the iPhone / iPad (don’t support Flash) and on many, many browsers and platforms.

http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

We still need Silverlight and Flash for the time being for the 75% of the market who's never heard of a codec.

As developers we still need Flash for backwards compatibility for video. By using HTML5 <video> tag we can support more codecs and platforms AND use flash for backwards compatibility.

Check out Video For Everybody.

I'm assuming you're talking about web video; if not, this info won't be applicable. The 'Video for Everybody' project at Camen Design has put a lot of work into cross-platform HTML5 video, and the test page has an extensive compatibility matrix for both desktop and mobile platforms.

Be aware that if you're targeting Android, its implementation of HTML5 video is lackluster (for now; I'd expect this to get better soon). Details of the problems, and a few solutions, can be found here: http://www.broken-links.com/2010/07/08/making-html5-video-work-on-android-phones/.

There's an example online that uses zero JS or flash but has all the fallthrus necessary to play in most environments:
http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

The video tag in HTML5 can support any codec at multiple resolutions (iPhone vs a PC) at the same time and use flash as a fallback when a browser doesn't support HTML5. See Video for everybody. The only thing standing in the way is transcoding the videos to multiple encoding and webmasters lack of interest/resources.

I tried it too. It plays great in Chrome.

But Firefox is another story. It plays great until I maximize it - then it stutters like crazy, on my 3.5ghz Phenom II X4.

720p? Why is it in a dinky little box, then?

That said, I love the UI. Very professional looking.

Also, I figured I'd toss this link out for comparison/interest: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

I've never heard of anyone mantaining a version of their site for IE and another for Mozilla Firefox. At most we have IE-specific CSS or Javascript code to work around certain bugs of IE6 and IE7... but that's hardly worth of being called "another version" of the site... more like a patch.

For a site of more than minimum complexity you need a solid code base... and having two different versions of the site goes completely against that purpose. That's why, for any development worth its salt, I don't expect we'll have a Flash and an HTML5 version... more likely there'll be a Flash version, which works almost everywhere (except for iPhones and iPads... but that's not for the sake of supporting HTML5 as a new vibrant standard). Use of HTML5 will probably grow as slowly as any other technology which is not widely supported, as easy and fun to use as it may be.

What may actually happen is that some flash players and libraries might include code that transparently uses HTML5 when available. Like this:

http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody ... Still this approach is only useful for very particular applications and libraries, and it still might make testing and developing a little harder.

Video tags are easier to accelerate. They can be handled by just about anything. That means rather than being locked to Flash, it can be played with Xine/GStreamer on Linux, Quicktime on OSX, DirectShow on Windows, DSP codecs on your phone, etc.; it might also be possible to use VLC on any platform, although that defeats the "accelerate" part.

And of course, you've always got Flash as a fallback.

P.S. Posted before, but this might be of interest to someone: Javascript-free HTML5/Flash video embedding, which works on desktops as well as devices like the iPhone: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

Oh come on. What on earth speaks against this:
<video>
    <source="elephanteatspoop.ogv" type="video/ogg" />
    <source="elephanteatspoop.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
        Get a decent browser.
        <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>
              <param name="src" value="player.swf?file=elephanteatspoop.mp4" />
                  No video for you.
        </object>
</video>
Usable right now, plays in almost all browsers. Of course you can always make it more complicated to include edge cases, but I don't like that. It's good to push people to update their browsers and get rid of opaque insecure plugins.

More importantly: There's a HTML only hack for the video tag that resolves to Flash for backwards compatibility as a last resort. It even supports multiple codecs etc. and oh... it also supports the iPhone...

Seems to me that there's no reason to still use Flash for video...

Youtube doesn't play smoothly on my Athlon II X2 3.5ghz. I'm amazed you got it to play acceptably on Windows, because I couldn't. ;)

PS: This seems relevent. Don't DDOS them.

http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

It's a non-javascript solution for embedding video that plays on a wide variety of devices and platforms. (iPhone, OSX, Linux, Windows, Firefox, IEx, Opera, etc.)

I hope by "detect", you mean "use fallbacks": see Video for Everybody for a clean way of handling HTML5 video tags in a way that will gracefully degrade and pretty much work fine on every browser (offering a download link for browsers which completely lack video support).

Then they can use the tag with the files they do have and include a Flash player fallback for those who can't play those files using HTML5. See Video for Everybody for an example of using <video> with fallbacks. Of course, that has the problem that it involves two encodes, but you could just as easily do just the H.264 one (which you would already be doing for the Flash player anyway) and ignore browsers which only support Theora for <video> in order to push universal support of H.264 in HTML5. HTML5 is defined by the browser writers whose features are influenced by what their users want.

You can use a single block of HTML below to provide video for everyone using the new tag:

Video For Everybody

Except video for everybody is not _a_ video for everybody it is different videos for different people. It is a lie. It's like advertising a "food that everyone likes" and serving different food to each person depending on what they like - you don't get to make one dish, you make lots of different ones, require lots of different preparation and cooking sessions, lots of different storage containers.

The implementation of the code to serve the video is not in question (in my analogy that's just the plate you serve the food on). It is the need for multiple formats and thus multiple transcoding and storage efforts. "video for everybody" requires (roughly) twice the storage and twice the transcoding of a plays-everywhere standard. If that's the best we can do then Flash wins.

The guy who wrote "video for everybody" (http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody#video-encode) admits that the encoding issues are so complex that he won't offer advice about encoding the files that he can say will work (perhaps he's worried about contributory patent infringement?). It shouldn't be that hard.

So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.

I think you've missed the point. The point is to be able to serve one video and know that all standards compliant browsers _can_ show it. We know you can serve different video to different browsers.

As a developer I don't ever want to go back to the methods of catering for broken browsers (IE6) and working around patent encumbered media formats (GIF). It would be better to be able to use the better format (PNG vs GIF later) if the browser makers (MS) can get the implementation right.

I suspect most web designers and developers would prefer a system of a working (supported!) cross-browser base with possibility for progressive enhancement - eg you _can_ send Ogg Theora to all compliant browsers but sending H.264 to some and Dirac, say, to others gives better quality. Those who can't afford to, or are unlicensed to, create video in non-open formats then can still participate fully in the web.

You can use a single block of HTML below to provide video for everyone using the new tag:

Video For Everybody

It works on older browsers too, falling back on built in players or even flash if it has to. You simply provide it one .mp4, and one .ogg file and it uses which is best.

Don't let this bickering stop everyone from moving to the video tag as soon as possible, which may then see further solution on a final standard.

I have to say though, the hardware support aspect to me makes h.264 support a must. I also think Apple should support ogg too, but Mozilla really needs to support this de-facto standard for video (it's not just Apple using this in hardware).

isn't it an irony that firefox 3.5 crashes with the vido link you provided ?

The whole point of the element is to allow content providers to choose one of the always supported formats and therefore know a-priori that it will work in the user's browser. A "choose one from this list" strategy, or creating a new plugin-hell for codecs doesn't accomplish this end.

I disagree - the video element explicitly allows for several source files, so the whole point is not to allow only for one codec, or to mandate several codecs which are supported by everyone. That would have been nice, but hasn't been possible. As it is the video element is now being treated more like the image one - different browsers will support different image formats, but most will support a few core ones.

The whole point of the video element is to allow pages to easily embed video files (as opposed to the messy complicated method using object elements). The video element allows for several encodings in order, so the process of choosing a codec is transparent to the user, so long as you can give them something they can play, and is painless for the provider, given that there are free options for converting to ogg.

So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.

Life would be great if there was one clear unencumbered codec with no drawbacks, or at least a choice of a few (as there are for image formats), but there isn't one clear winner (ogg theora has definite disadvantages, the most important being lack of hardware support and quality issues). I think Apple should support Ogg, and see why Mozilla resist h.264 - there are strong arguments for both sides.

In the meantime the video element makes presenting video possible without a plugin with any sane browser (i.e. not IE), and is a step toward native browser support when people converge on a codec (or several) as they did with image formats.

You can use a single block of HTML below to provide video for everyone using the new tag:

Video For Everybody

It works on older browsers too, falling back on built in players or even flash if it has to. You simply provide it one .mp4, and one .ogg file and it uses which is best.

Don't let this bickering stop everyone from moving to the video tag as soon as possible, which may then see further solution on a final standard.

I have to say though, the hardware support aspect to me makes h.264 support a must. I also think Apple should support ogg too, but Mozilla really needs to support this de-facto standard for video (it's not just Apple using this in hardware).

The tag already supports fallbacks to different codecs. See Video for Everybody for details. The browser will look at the sources specified in order until it finds one it can decode.

You can still make use of the tag in a cross platform way. Video For Everybody Is a simple set of code that uses the video tag with only two input files - an ogg and an mp4 - and lets the tag work for, well, everyone. IE6? Check. Safari? Check. iPhone? Yep.

It falls back to whatever method works for playback - including using Flash to play the h.264 if it needs to.

It's pretty funny to see so many people bitching about Apple not supporting ogg when Microsoft ignores the tag altogether. Everyone, start supporting the video tag today as widespread use is the only way to get big companies to fully adopt it - perhaps that will motivate Apple to someday support ogg.

I suggest you take a look at Kroc Camen's "Video for Everybody" HTML5 video element implementation. Not a hint of Javascript is necessary to implement it, and it's very cross-platform. It can play back in OGG, Flash, Quicktime (even on the iPhone), WMA, or alternatively provide a download link. http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

Good news, someone wrote up a letter pointing out the drawbacks... it's the last link in the summary.

I currently use Linux exclusively. Such movies/audio clips open with the Totem plugin for me now. (I find it works better than the mplayer plugin which I used to use.) I agree that giving the user a choice of plugins is stupid and confusing. As I mentioned in my post, I see no reason that could not be implemented with HTML fallbacks. For example, as in the Video for Everybody script but leaving out the Flash (or putting it last).

Yeah, now if only they had used HTML or some other system that degrades gracefully...