I just finished up watching the latest Diggnation and was quite surprised to hear Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose claim there was no reason to use the flash video playback anymore. As you can imagine I was astounded at this notion. Video playback through the Flash player on the web has been a major part of my focus for more than 5 years now and the next best options are not even close.
I for one have not yet delved into building HTML5 pages yet, so I thought I would do a quick test. As a quick test I spent 5 minutes adding a video tag to an HTML page and linked a video to it, excellent! Fast and easy, what everybody likes. So I tested this on Safari first, knowing this browser seems to support HTML5 the best, and no worries there. Next Firefox 3.6, see the resulting screen shot below. Turns out FF supports the video tag but not the H.264 codec. So because of this you cannot use alternative content, like say the flash plugin just in case your browser does not support that specific tag. You just get a big grey box. Check out how the video presents in your browser http://www.brucelevick.com/html5.html.
- Video tag support in FF
So without even getting to the most commonly used browser on the market there is already a big issue of the different codecs supported in different browsers (Flash plays the same codecs no matter what the browser), with no control that I can see if one of these codecs is not supported. As for IE, the most commonly used browser, no support whatsoever for the video tag. Yes I certainly should ditch my Flash video playback (sarcasm if you didn’t pick up on it.) . I will say one thing that at least with browsers that have no support you can implement alternative content. Until IE supports some other codec the others don’t, then HTML5 video playback is going to be a nightmare to manage.
Check out how your browser measures up. http://html5test.com/
Also check out the “limited” attributes the HTML5 video tag has. http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_video.asp. Don’t even get me started on the comparisons to the Flash video functions.
Sorry for the rant, I just find this very frustrating to hear industry geeks make ridiculously uninformed statements, and that the (video playback) wheel is being reinvented so to speak. Lets not go back 10 years and go through that same teeth pulling revolution we went through 10 years ago. I can’t go through that client heartache implementing elements working on one browser and not the other, not again. HTML5 video playback… not for a while.
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True, Flash video has robust features -due to the fact that it’s been around for so many years – obviously it’s been nurtured and developed into what it is today. 90% of all browsers having Flash installed proves that – but don’t rule HTML 5 and the video tag out.
In such a short time HTML 5 has made huge strides but is still in infant stages. Will it replace Flash? No. Will it be another markup language we have to implement to accommodate every browser? Yes. To me, that is all it will ever be. My choice whether to use it or not.
As a video professional, I now have to encode one video into 3 different formats for cross compatibility. Yes, it’s a pain at triple the work, but as a content producer it has to be done to reach the largest possible audience.
Thank God there is markup language that is essentially a stage for open source .OGG video – when 2012 hits I’m not going to be the one paying licensing fees for using the other formats.
BTW, no one cares about IE anymore. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Thanks for your comment Brian, I certainly won’t rule the video tag out, it will have it’s place eventually. But for now it is one big nightmare.
RE: IE – The projects that I am involved with, IE is the most popular browser according to the visitor analytics. Regardless of the overall browser stats, I can’t ignore that. FF is at 46%, which is great, but does not support H.264 and there is no way to counter for that as you can see above.
RE: .OGG Safari for the iPhone does not support .OGG. Again with the browser compatibility codecs, nightmare.
Can I ask where you are delivering your videos? If it is through Flash then you only need one format. I am assuming you are talking about mobile/apps perhaps?
I also agree that HTML5 will eventually be the standard. I just hear too many people mouthing off that it is right now. Way off!
Some other points on delivering video with the HTML5 video tag. Currently doesn’t suit enterprise level sites. Can’t skin or customise the interface, can’t deliver RTMP streaming (doesn’t cache), doesn’t seek forward, doesn’t provide dynamic buffering, doesn’t provide multi-bitrate smooth streaming, can’t use cuepoints and no Live streaming.
All of the above points are critical with my current video content projects.