Comments on: video – more than just a tag

By: nil's hidden file» Blog Archive » HTML5 如火如荼进行时

nil's hidden file» Blog Archive » HTML5 如火如荼进行时 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:42:33 +0000

[...] 随着 Firefox 版本升级到 3.5，正式支持 HTML5，坊间对该标准的讨论就没停过。其中最显著的，标签，因为对浏览器该支持哪一个视频编码而纠结不休，很是著名。 [...]

By: @sull

@sull — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:40:39 +0000

Vince,

I see what you mean now. I misinterpreted.

Lack of Supporting mp4 with the native video tag in FF has to do mostly with licensing, as has been discussed here and elsewhere.

But honestly, as a developer i don’t think the lack of native mp4 support using the video element adds much complexity to video handling – you could use sometihng like this – http://metavid.org/wiki/Mv_Embed or do your own browser detection and output accordingly. it’s no worse than the current state of media embedding.

And it’s not a developers problem as much as it is a content creators concern… the users of the sites/pages that you build.
And video content creators typically are used to providing multiple formats for diff platofrms and devices. Not much changing there either. Except, I hope… more Ogg media.

Not much of an argument unless you are the ones responsible for the costs involved with integrating h.264… and with Ogg Theora improvements… the cost is not justifued compared to any differences in quality.

By: @sull

@sull — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:46:59 +0000

my comment got stripped but regardless… the point i was making is that the video tag can be used for flv or mp4 or other formats, not just ogg media. specifying an ogg file is not required.

By: @sull

@sull — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:42:12 +0000

Vince-

is how you could provide 3 formats. but you can also just provide whichever format you want and ignore others.

having a default codec does not cause a developer to have more problems. however, having a default codec does help a content creator have more assurance that a video can be played by modern browsers regardless of extra plugins (that need to be properly updated with various codecs).

By: Vince

Vince — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:35:18 +0000

Why can’t you just provide support for BOTH Mpeg4 and Ogg Theora!? Why do you have to make it difficult? If I want to implement this tag I have to use THREE video formats to make sure it works in all browsers! Three! I may as well just stick with Flash since everyone will have the plugin for it anyway. It’s very frustrating as a solo developer who is trying to maintain a site in his free time when a great new spec comes out and everyone want to have a pissing contest over codecs that ultimately just screws us, the developers.

Thanks Mozilla/Apple!

By: Alexandre

Alexandre — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:43:37 +0000

Laurentj: Thanks for your response!
Great with @poster, I missed this one when I last read the spec’
Yes, I knew about source to provide different versions (e.g. MP4/h264, Ogg/Theora), but in the case I want to provide two or more different qualities of the same container/codec, as far as I can see the first in the list will be played (I have not read in details), but there is apparently no simple way to specify the quality and/or to switch from one quality from the other. Probably that can be addressed partially by having some quality information in the “codec” part, and switch the order of the source elements in Javascript(?).

By: Henri Sivonen

Henri Sivonen — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:40:31 +0000

The /> syntax on the video element in text/html makes the rest of the page be swallowed into video fallback. There needs to be an explicit end tag in text/html.

By: @sull

@sull — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:31:15 +0000

nice article.

btw, was just curious about the poster attribute and landed on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449156

any idea when this will be avail in an 3.5RC ?

thanks.

sull

By: video – more than just a tag at hacks.mozilla.org | ScriptRemix.com Scripts

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:51:54 +0000

[...] More here: video – more than just a tag at hacks.mozilla.org [...]

By: Ms2ger

Ms2ger — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:00:27 +0000

Please, the syntax for boolean attributes is |controls|, |controls=""| or |controls="controls"|, not |controls="true"|. (Also, you typo'd |width| as |with| twice in the last example.) @Alexandre: For the a thumbnail, there's the |poster=""| attribute, but it isn't implemented yet in Firefox. Multiple versions could probably be done with multiple |source| element (||), but that doesn't seem to be supported either.

By: Laurentj

Laurentj — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:01:56 +0000

@alexandre :

> It looks like there is no standard way to provide a few important information such as a thumbnail

No, there is such feature described by the html5 specification: the “poster” attribute, in which you can indicate an URL of an image. However this is not implemented in Firefox 3.5 (it will be in the next version).

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#attr-video-poster

>and another quality

Again, the specification allows it, with the source element http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-source-element

But it is not completely implemented in Firefox 3.5.

By: Alexandre

Alexandre — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:20:03 +0000

It looks like there is no standard way to provide a few important information such as a thumbnail (to be shown before the video is loaded/played), and another quality (e.g. switch normal/HD).
Yes, it is possible to do that with CSS/Javascript, but I think it would be nice to have a standard, semantically valid, accessible way to do so.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:53:38 +0000

Pretty extensive coverage.

Thank you, Paul!