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MillimeterA Coming War Over Web Video?
Feb 5, 2010 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer
Apple's new iPad will not support the Flash video that's so common across the Web, opening a door for video embedding via HTML5.
You could hear the jeers the instant Apple introduced its iPad last week. It was a common refrain: "No Flash support? What's the point?" Lack of support for the ubiquitous Adobe format means blank squares on websites—not the experience anyone wants from a new, class-defining device such as the iPad.
According to reports from a private meeting with his employees at Apple, CEO Steve Jobs complained to his employees about Flash performance and blamed it for causing Apple products to crash. (Flash on the Mac is considered to be relatively resource-hungry, a huge hindrance for a device that boasts up to 10 hours of video playback per battery charge.) Adobe responded in a blog post that Apple is simply denying its customers the full range of content on the Web, including 75 percent of web video. "It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers," wrote Adrian Ludwig.
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What the iPad offers instead of Flash is support for HTML5 via the Safari 4 browser. HTML5 serves video natively, without the need for a plug-in such as Flash or Microsoft Silverlight.
The big video-hosting sites on the Web, YouTube and Vimeo, have both recently announced experimental support for HTML5, which relies on H.264 technology for video playback on Safari and Google Chrome. Flash, on the other hand, can rely on different codecs.
To get a sense for the promise that HTML5 holds, check out Jilion's SublimeVideo player. (For this and to test Vimeo's player and YouTube's, make sure you have Safari 4.0.4+, Google Chrome 4.0+, or IE with Chrome Frame installed.) SublimeVideo enables live resizing of the video when the browser window is expanded, for instance.
What this all means for professional video producers is yet unclear, of course. Flash is here for a good while longer; it's plugged into 98 percent of browsers. Meanwhile, Safari and Chrome aren't exactly IE and Firefox. But as mobile devices and tablets become more common as video players, and easy ways to share videos in social (and networking!) situations, you're going to want to make your video demo reel available for playback as widely as possible.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.