iPad Will Usher In a New Era of HTML5 Video

[riso]

When Apple first introduced the iPad to the world, there was more than a bit of consternation around the fact that the new device, which finally ships next week, wouldn’t support Adobe Flash. While limiting access to a whole range of Flash-based games and web sites that rely on the plugin for their user interface, lack of Flash support would also mean that iPad owners wouldn’t be able to watch a lot of web video that is delivered via Flash.

We first theorized that video publishers would turn to creating iPad apps and selling shows and movies through iTunes as a way to get around the device’s lack of Flash support. But now it looks like growing support for HTML5 video will alleviate some of those issues, as publishers and technology vendors alike move to support the web standard.

An early test on CBS.com shows how some publishers might approach the problem, by creating HTML5 video pages specifically designed for video playback on the iPad’s Safari browser. By using device auto-detect measures, those publishers can deliver the appropriate HTML5 videos when a user drops by with a device that doesn’t support Flash, but revert back to the Flash player when connecting from a desktop machine.

As a result of publisher interest, some technology vendors are already moving to support these measures. White-label video platform provider Ooyala, for instance, already announced support for H.264-based HTML5 video delivery on the iPad, and more are sure to follow in the lead-up to the release of the device.

But HTML5 video could expand beyond just the iPad, especially since they will already be encoding and delivering video to meet the needs of the device. There’s no reason, for instance, that publishers couldn’t auto-detect supporting browsers and use HTML5 and H.264 encoding when available, while using the Flash player as a fallback on the desktop.

Of course, this assumes that the same analytics and advertising features that are already available on Flash will soon be enabled through HTML5 video players. Without a good way to measure or monetize video delivered through HTML5, the use of the web standard will be limited to niche applications or devices where there isn’t a better solution already available. Given the opportunity that the iPad presents, however, we can expect publishers and technology providers to work hard to enable those features as quickly as possible

[arahman32]

What codec are the HTML5 videos gonna use? If it's Ogg, I'm all for it. But if it's H.264, they can forget about going mainstream anytime soon.

[Jake]

Most likely the power players in the industry will go with H.264 (Mozilla being the exception of course).  It's a well developed codec that can easily be associated with quality by the average, uninformed user.  Unfortunately, Ogg doesn't have that kind of recognition, and as such will probably not be supported.

But who knows, maybe MS and Apple will use Ogg to avoid extra licensing costs.

[javajolt]

YouTube have announced a beta of HTML5 support. These are broadcasting videos in H.264 format for browsers that understand HTML5's <video> tag. The choice of H.264 is perhaps unsurprising, since that's what Apple's iPhone supports natively (and indeed, is how the YouTube mobile application is rendered). This means that other browsers that don't support H.264 won't be able to render content.

The initial supported list includes Safari 4+, Google Chrome and the Chrome Frame plugin for Internet Explorer. Although FireFox 3.6 was released today with HTML5 support, it only supports the open-source OGG video format.

The HTML5 specification (which grew out of the WhatWG) includes a native tag for <video> and <audio> amongst other enhancements. However, there were disagreements about which codec to support for video rendering. (Codecs are programs that can decode a stream of binary data into a sequence of video frames.) At issue were questions of efficiency (which produces a smaller download, but also which is computationally easier to decode) and patents which protect those algorithms.

The choices lie between the patent-covered MPEG standard H.264, widely implemented in hardware and on mobile devices (such as the iPhone), and the open-source and probably unpatented Ogg format. Large companies (with the ability to execute licensing deals) such as Google and Apple are behind the H.264 format (having already licensed it for other uses), whereas open-source companies such as Firefox and Opera are backing the open-source Ogg format.

At one point, the WHATWG tried to standardise on a single video format, leading to a lengthy debate. In the end, in an effort to ensure that the WHATWG (now HTML5) group did not stagnate, Ian Hickson posted a compromise position of not demanding a single format.