Using of html5 <video> tag in web-based applications for iPhone

Question

As you know iPhone plays video content from < video> tags in full-screen mode via internal media player. Here I have several questions:

1) is it possible to show custom text over video playing? something like subtitles appeared during movie playback.

I tried several solutions like http://blog.gingertech.net/2008/12/12/attaching-subtitles-to-html5-video/, but seems they are not working in iPhone case.

Ideally, I want to add some div over media player and show necessary information there.

2) is there any way to disable controls of iPhone media player. Seams it is not metter if you add "controls" attrinbute to < video> tag or don't add, iPhone always switch on controls for media player. The goal for me is do not allow to user to change playback possition(user should see full movie from start to finish. Of course user can stop the video, but he can't rewind a record)

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

iPhone OSes from 3.2 (iPad) onwards support the embedding of video item to the HTML page and shows the video inside the defined container. There are also many HTML5 video players that claim to be 'iPad' compliant and support overlays for displaying controls and stuff on iPad.

If you want to experiment with tag support, I would highly suggest you to download the latest Apple iPhone OS SDK and run the iPad emulator in case you don't own one, although the emulator does have it limitations. With the basic setup you can try experimenting with your HTML5 code.

For reference (and starting point), check e.g. the code for open source HTML5 video player OSMPlayer or such: http://www.mediafront.org/project/osmplayer.