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Moving Beyond Flash: the Yahoo HTML5 Video Player (streamingmedia.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the gone-like-a-Flash dept.

Slashdot reader theweatherelectric writes: Over on Streaming Media, Amit Jain from Yahoo has written a behind-the-scenes look at the development of Yahoo's HTML5 video player. He writes, "Adobe Flash, once the de-facto standard for media playback on the web, has lost favor in the industry due to increasing concerns over security and performance. At the same time, requiring a plugin for video playback in browsers is losing favor among users as well. As a result, the industry is moving toward HTML5 for video playback...

At Yahoo, our video player uses HTML5 across all modern browsers for video playback. In this post we will describe our journey to providing an industry-leading playback experience using HTML5, lay out some of the challenges we faced, and discuss opportunities we see going forward."
Yet another brick in the wall? YouTube and Twitch have already switched to HTML5, and last year Google started automatically converting Flash ads to HTML5.

13 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Taking a page from Microsoft by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Coming very late to the party, and probably with nothing but a run-of-the-mill offering. Is Yahoo still relevant?

    1. Re:Taking a page from Microsoft by jrumney · · Score: 4, Funny

      They are trying to leverage all the publicity they are getting from the password hack by showing everyone that they are still capable of keeping up with the state of web development in 2011.

  2. lolwut? by Desler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What challenges? Was typing:

    <video controls><source src=""></video>

    really that hard?

    1. Re:lolwut? by spongman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Was typing ... really that hard?

      yeah, that's fine if you want your video to work only sometimes, on some devices. and if you don't need pre-rolls, or interstitials, or playlists, or analytics, or you don't care about handling full-screen correctly, or adaptive bitrate.

      pop quiz: which versions of firefox support h.264? which protocol suports bitrate streaming on google chrome on windows? on iPad?

    2. Re:lolwut? by Desler · · Score: 2

      and if you don't need pre-rolls, or interstitials, or playlists, or analytics,

      You're correct. I don't need any of that. All off that is just bullshit added in to annoy the person trying to watch a video.

    3. Re:lolwut? by Jahta · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What challenges? Was typing:

      <video controls><source src=""></video>

      really that hard?

      Unfortunately that's too simple for many sites. They want to wrap "added value" around the video.

  3. -Still- looking at you, BBC... by mccalli · · Score: 3, Interesting

    BBC still requires Flash on my desktop Safari. Switch the user-agent to being an iPad and presto - nice, working HTML 5 video without a single layout change either. Have sent in 'feedback' time after time after time.

    Honestly, get with the times and dump Flash. Or at least service HTML 5 for preference and only fall back to Flash. Not this "let's serve Flash to HTML 5-capable browsers" rubbish.

  4. Re:Yahoo has videos? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "What kind of video content does Yahoo host?
    Advertising. The article does a lot of handwaving, and there are boxes filled with smaller boxes, and those smaller boxes are filled with gibberish. Other than one football game just once, the only content that they specifically address is advertising.
    "The second challenge involved advertising. While content video playback has shifted to HTML5, most video advertisers continue to rely on Flash..."
    Oh the poor dears; Yahoo must make sure that HTML5 advertising is as thoroughly obnoxious as Flash advertising, otherwise we won't appreciate the full advertising experience.

    "For my ally is the Advertising, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Advertising is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."
    (Preceding brought to you by "Star Trek- The Motion Picture")

  5. Facebook by darkain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oddly enough, Facebook has reverted from HTML5 back to Flash for their desktop site. This is highly odd, considering they support video on non-flash-enabled mobile devices. This is extremely frustrating trying to see videos from friends and then be notified I cannot, due to lack of flash, although it worked a month or two ago.

    1. Re:Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's likely because they added live video. The way the handle live broadcasts likely doesn't work well with current HTML5 tech.

    2. Re:Facebook by markus · · Score: 2

      I would vote you up if I could. There are in fact real technical problems with showing life content in HTML5 videos. And while there are a couple of proposals on how to address this issue, there is so far no consensus among browser makers. I expect things to get better quickly, as all major browsers are rapidly moving away from Flash. But for a small numbers of specific use cases, HTML5 does not quite have an adequate answer.

      The bad news is that this will be painful for the smallish number of affected web developers. The good news is that most of the problem cases have been identified and are actively being worked on

  6. This isn't a huge deal by Jack9 · · Score: 2

    > In this post we will describe our journey to providing an industry-leading playback experience using HTML5

    In other words, a regular html5 player with ads enabled. Their mystery recommendation engine is the hardest part (depending on how complicated they make the VAST/VPAID).

    --

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
    Everyone knows me.
  7. Re:1 question by ITRambo · · Score: 2

    On a television.