Long gone are the days where flash had to be used in order to display video on a website. Over the past few years, there has been a new web technology in the works; HTML5. In addition to many new features, such as Geolocation, advanced selectors, and animations, HTML5 sports a new way to embed video files.
Stormfront Productions has recently started to incorporate HTML5 video into our own website. With a new banner video which is compatible with all browsers, we are starting to make the long transition to that of HTML5. Check out our new video here.
As of now, there are three formats that can be used to display the video. First, H.264 was developed by the MPEG group and standardized in 2003. It can be used on any platform no matter what type of hardware is used. H.264 is a patented technology and requires payment of patent license royalties, so when using this codec you must be very careful. Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari are the only browsers that have native support for H.264 at this time while Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 plans to support this codec. Next, there is the VP8 codec which was developed by On2. On2 was bought by Google in 2010 with the intent to irrevocably release all of its patents pertaining to VP8 and release it as a royalty-free codec for use in WebM videos. WebM is a container format for VP8 video and Vorbis (sometimes called Ogg Vorbis) audio, much like Flash Video (FLV) and MPEG 4 (MP4) are for H.264 video and AAC audio. Because of its BSD license and royalty-free nature it is a very good choice for use in online video. WebM is not currently supported by any stable browser release, but support has been announced for all major browsers (except Safari) with development releases already coming down the pipeline. Lastly, there is the Ogg container format. It is completely open source, utilizing a BSD license, and has no royalties or patents associated with it. The Ogg format is the most compatible format with current browsers with support from Chrome , Firefox and Opera . If you'd like to convert your video to this format, you can utilize Firefogg from within Firefox. Other methods are available, but this is by far the easiest to use.
As of now, all the current browsers are lacking support for WebM. Even though we would like it, not every browser is going to support all three formats. As new versions of browsers are released, more support for HTML5 video will be added. Chrome will support all three types of codecs in their next major browser release. Firefox and Opera will support WebM and Ogg codecs with their next major browser release. Microsoft's IE9 will support H.264 as previously stated. Internet Explorer, the perennial bane of most developer's existences, will surprisingly feature support for WebM video with the catch that the codec will have to be downloaded and installed separately as Microsoft will not be shipping IE9 with native support. Meanwhile, Apple's Safari is holding tight with support for H.264 only, without any announcement for support of WebM as of yet.
Since different video codecs only work in certain browsers when using HTML5's <video> tag, there needs to be three sources for the same video to insure that it will be viewable in almost all browsers. The problem arises when someone is using Internet Explorer (IE9 has not yet been released). The unfortunate workaround that developers have been using is Flash. While the point of HTML5 is to get away from Flash and third-party companies that specialize in video software, this cannot happen until HTML5 is widely adopted and users make use of these updated browsers. Luckily, the ability to fall back on Flash is a graceful transition within HTML5. HTML5 is a great step forward in the world of web development and design. Getting new browsers into that hands of users will take some time, but the wait will be worth it.