What is the recommended (cross-browser) video format to use on websites so that users' browsers (or most of them) wouldn't require to download a plugin to view it?
+2
A:
There is no such format available yet. The best way to go is:
- Flash (most of the users have flash plugin installed already, 99% according to http://www.adobe.com/products/player%5Fcensus/flashplayer/)
- OGG (This will be available in HTML5 as standard)
rochal
2009-11-21 21:08:35
Hummm ... 99% ... most active webusers I know have flash-blockers because of all the annoying ads.If it is a small clip ... perhaps a GIF animation?
Sigersted
2009-11-21 21:18:11
100% of youtube users I know have flash enabled, so if website is movie-oriented, I think people should be smart enough to add it to 'exception list' or something like that
rochal
2009-11-21 21:26:24
Do not ever use Flash because using Flash tends to break conventions associated with normal HTML pages. Selecting text, scrolling, form control and right-clicking act differently than with a regular HTML webpage. And yes, it requires download a plugin.
psihodelia
2009-11-21 21:26:36
Flash is fine. An animated GIF, even a small one, will be HUGE.
Pekka
2009-11-21 21:37:49
For all Flash's problems, it's massively preferable to any of the hideous, unstable media player plugins. The market has overwhelmingly decided for Flash video ahead of the other plugins. HTML5 video is nice where available, but it's going to be nowhere near Flash's client-side penetration for years yet, and there are still format difficulties (OGG is *not* part of the HTML5 standard as Apple refused to implement it, just to be contrary).
bobince
2009-11-21 21:38:02
A:
None! but you can do it with HTML 5 which is not implimented by all browsers ...
if you really need a video on your page i would recommend flash or silverlight
Yassir
2009-11-21 21:09:55
I'm not so sure about Silverlight, isn't there still screen tearing and other frame rate and quality issues with it? High-quality screen redraw didn't seem mature last time I played with it (3)... just moving a single bitmap without tearing issues required some extra work - and a shape was impossible without first manually converting it into a bitmap for some reason? (on the other hand, a very small percentage of people seem to notice or care about jerky, flickery or just bad redraw quality these days - digital signage went from smooth Amiga Info Channel TVs to jerky windows-driven walls ^^
Oskar Duveborn
2009-11-21 21:48:18
A:
A giant GIF. (You could attach a Javascript image preloader script to the movie to load it.)
attack
2009-11-21 21:15:27
+1
A:
Yes HTML5 will solve some of the problems of not needing a plugin, but different browser vendors have chosen different codecs and file formats. It's complicated, but Dive Into HTML 5 has a great article.
Tom
2009-11-21 21:17:10
A:
In a couple of months HTML 5 will be supported by almost all browsers on this planet. If you are planning to run your services in 2010 just use OGG open standard container format. It is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia. It is already supported by Firefox 3.5 and soon all browsers will support it.
Please look at documentation and wiki on http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
psihodelia
2009-11-21 21:23:48
Whilst I would love Ogg Theora to be ubiquitous, it is not required by HTML5 and it's deliberately not supported by Safari's implementation of the video element. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy . Plus of course IE shows no interest in suppporting video at all. Full HTML5 support is several years off; the standard isn't even finished yet.
bobince
2009-11-21 21:33:28
This whole ogg thing is annoying, we already have a modern defacto standard video format for the web, for high-resolution home theatre, for camcorders and so on towards infinity... so what if it's layered in licensing and patent issues - so is jpeg... I'm not recoding good stuff nor am I replacing my gifs and jpegs with pngs... very few portable music players support the politically correct file formats but any of them can play mp3's...
Oskar Duveborn
2009-11-21 21:42:01
+5
A:
There is no single video that will play in every browser. If you want it to work across the most browsers, you're going to have to encode your video more than once. Dive into HTML5 video has the gory details.
You nest your video references so that browsers try these in order, falling back if it's not supported:
- Ogg Theora
- MP4 H.264
- A Flash container displaying #2
Number 1 gets you Firefox 3.5 and Chrome. Number 2 gets you Safari and the mobile phone WebKit browsers. Number 3 gets you IE, Firefox ≤3, and Opera.
jleedev
2009-11-21 21:25:12
+1 feels like the best solution right now if you really want to catch them all, with a reservation that currently the 3rd fallback would likely be the by far most utilized path?
Oskar Duveborn
2009-11-21 21:59:38