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?
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)
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
A giant GIF. (You could attach a Javascript image preloader script to the movie to load it.)
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.
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/
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.