(HTML) HTML5 Mobile Video with Flash, Silverlight, Java, Animated GIF and Download fallback

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:33:26 GMT

Due to device capability inconsistencies and fragmentation, in order to play on the broadest range of devices, approximately 6 formats would be required: Flash VP6 (IE 5-7, Netscape) WMV ( IE7+, Windows Phone) Ogg Theora (FF, Fenick, Opera, Opera Mobile) WebM VP8 (Chrome, Android phones/tablets) MP4 baseline H.264 (Safari, iOS devices: iPad/iPod/iPhone) 3GP via RTSP or HTTP (Blackberry, Nokia and other legacy Mobile devices) Optionally... an animated GIF can be used for frame playback with no audio, not a great experience but works fine as long as text transcripts are available to accompany. Not really a serious way to transfer video though, just a desperate fallback (and was once upon a time the only way to simulate video on a phone). By my heinously imprecise math, the right combination of these should reach about 90% of internet users (2B) and 50% of mobile devices with video and/or internet capabilities (0.8B), which would be 2.8 Billion people. REFERENCES ----------------- Internet Stats: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Mobile Stats: http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats#mobilebroadband DiveIntoHTML5 - VIDEO: http://diveintohtml5.info/video.html JW Player Wizard: http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard Detect via javascript whether Silverlight is installed: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/119980/detect-via-javascript-whether-silverlight-is-installed Akamai's "should play EVERYWHERE" Mobile video demo: http://tinyurl.com/showmethebunny Cortado player on Theora: http://www.theora.org/cortado/ NOTE: Omitting "poster" attribute of HTML5 tag lets us also reach those few iOS users who haven't upgraded from iOS3 versions, which had a player bug with poster was used. NOTE2: Likewise, turning off autoplay on all the players has two purposes, firstly we will only stream when we are sure the user wants to watch the video, secondly it avoids multiple players starting automatically on page load (which would require alot of obtrusive Javsacript and player juggling to prevent from happening).

Snipplr - bcmoney

(HTML) HTML5 Mobile Video with Flash, Silverlight, Java, Animated GIF and Download fallback