For those who don't know, FLash is becoming obsolete... it no longer runs on applications such as IPhone and Ipad... within the next year or two, it's suspected to be gone completely.

For those of you who have Flash Video previews on your site, these are going to be useless soon. HTML5 has come out with the Canvas/Video option which, according to Steven Jobs, founder of Apple, is going to be the new standard.

There are rumors of Adobe creating a new Flash creation application that will export the project to Canvas to use in HTML5, though it has not yet been verified.

Just giving the heads up in case you didn't know. I personally, am trying to learn how to incorporate HTML5 canvas/video but we are at the line where only newer browsers support it and older browsers dont.

If anyone else has any information on this, I'd love to get some feeedback, as I am still kinda in the dark about the whole thing.

Bradley Carter
StickySplash.us

Bradley, the 2D specification in HTML5 does not include support for playing video, generically. It could replace flash animations like games, animations, and flash user interfaces, but it's not going to replace flash video, as far as I can determine. I read the 2D canvas extensions in HTML5 and checked the SMIL and SVG documents. You will still need a plug-in to decode video, so I would bet you lunch there will be a flash video decoder.

In any case, HTML5 is a ways off. It is still in draft form.

thanks for the info, like i said, i'm still looking around to figure this jazz out....

HOWEVER... Youtube is already incorporating HTML5 video, you just have to click on the Beta test to have the videos play in HTML5.. works without Flash player.

Just because it doesn't require flash player, doesn't mean it isn't encoded as a flash video. The presentation frame and the codec are two, separate things. If the W3C people are going to address video compression, they'll have a long way to go.

Having reread your original post, I think I might be reading something into it. If you're saying the the Flash player is on it's way out, you could be right. It's just a simple wrapper, though, so I don't see this as a big deal. You could offer both on a web page, since it's just a wrapper. It's going to be a long time before Flash goes away. It would be nice, however, to be able to do away with SWF files.

I can't find the HTML5 preview option on YouTube. Where did you find that?

Yeah, Youtube runs on flash, Apple is just ridiculously out of touch. Jobs was quoted saying that "if you want to watch porn, buy a Droid". WTF

Interesting article on THE HUFFINGTON POST about HTML5 and porn.

Thought it was worth my 2 cents on this. I agree that flash is dying, it is still however the most flexible option for playing video. But html5 video works well today.

My new site at messy.asia is working well with html5 video. It really is browser dependent, I'll explain how it works.

If a visitor comes to the site in safari or chrome then the videos play as mp4 videos with no extra plugins or codecs needed, the browser does it all. If they are on firefox or opera then the system detects this and delivers video in ogg theora, which again needs no plugins for these browsers. If the visitor is using Internet explorer or an old browser then the site detects this and plays the mp4s in a flash container. So to the visitor it just always works regardless of browser. We'll be adding webm support soon, though not needed for anything yet.

The downside being you can't overlay adverts and things on the html5 video and security is an issue because the video is in a video tag similar to an image so can just be right clicked and downloaded (can be got round, kinda).

Stu

Oh, and on the point I read higher up about html5 not playing video without plugins, that's not true. It's not in the canvas tag, it is simply executed through a video tag. Just point at ogv or mp4 video and it'll play. Depending on browsers of course. There is no set standard format yet. Chrome is the best currently as it plays all formats, but new safari also does ogg and mp4. Just firefox falling behind.

That's interesting. So HTML5 uses MP4 video only? My point was that something has to decode the video, whether you call it a plug-in or the native browser or OS support. HTML5 does not seem to specify the video codec. Formats other than MP4 will probably still be playable, as long as the browser has a plug-in that supports it. There has to be a decoder.

The browser can already decode either mp4 or ogg theora video (or both in the case of some). No plug-in needed. It's like the ability to display different image formats. No plugins needed to view jpg, png or gif files. As the web moves forward this should be the case with video files, browsers just play them.

This link is by far the most informative I have found on it. http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html

That article essentially says what I've been trying to say. Here is a quote from that article:

Well, HTML5 includes a [video] element for embedding video into a web page. There are no restrictions on the video codec, audio codec, or container format you can use for your video. One [video] element can link to multiple video files, and the browser will choose the first video file it can actually play. It is up to you to know which browsers support which containers and codecs.

i.e. html5 doesn't define the video container format or audio/video codecs. There may be natively supported formats for users of certain browsers, but somewhere the code must exist to decode and play the multi-media file. HTML5 does not define how or where that is done, or what formats must be supported.

Exactly. html5 just introduces a video tag element. It is the browser that understands how to play them now. No need to rely on an external plugin. I guess in some ways it is a little like what tried to be done with windows media and quicktime within the browser but these needed you to install extra stuff.

Hopefully, browsers will support many formats just like they can for still images. But the makers of the web browsers will stick to standard formats to keep things simple. WebM will be one to watch, but for now it's really mp4 with the widest support. Still, as the article says if you want to make your videos viewable by all then you should create ogg and mp4 files and include a small flash player in case neither can be played by the user.

You can't actually add plugins for other formats to browsers currently. That may be possible in the future but it is built into the code of the browser, not a plugins folder.

So as the article points out it's ogg, mp4 or webM.

I'm not trying to argue, because it seems we're on the same page here, but you're taking me too literally when I use the word "plug-in". From the beginning I was trying to say that HTML5 doesn't define how/where the video will be decoded and what formats are supported. That has to be determined by the browser software. Exactly how it's done, whether it be with hardware decoders, built in software, DLLs, plug-ins, or operating system support (e.g. Quicktime on a Mac is natively supported by the OS), is not defined.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about HTML5 and I'm a long time supporter of open standards. I hate Flash and I hate that people need to install special software to play the videos I host (especially Quicktime and MP4). This will be a step in the right direction, and if we can get all browser providers to support open formats (Microsoft isn't known for embracing standards based solutions), we'll all be better off. Personally, I don't like Flash video (FLV), but I'll bet that FLV support will stick around for a while. There are just too many Flash videos out there... I'm about to create some more of them tomorrow.

I'm happy to see that both of the browsers I use regularly support the HTML5 video element. I'll be experimenting with it as soon as I can make time.

Thanks for all the good links and information.

Agree 100% this is an exciting move and one that will hopefully get rid of flash for video content. Being a google chrome user the only thing that ever crashes my browser is flash.

Yeah, I'm not trying to argue at all. Can't wait to see more sites adding new video options.

I know I'm late in this thread but I have been following and looking into HTML5 since it's inception.

Couple of things, Apple is not being ignorant. Flash is a resource hog and the sooner it dies the better. Lots of people shouted when they stopped putting floppy drives on computer early, but guess what? Didn't need it, it was holding us back.

Flash only just got working on Android - too little too late and still resource intensive (Read battery intensive.)

So, scrap that nonsense already and move on...

Embedding h264 is just a case of tags, but if you want a proper player it gets into coding. Already though a couple of people have players in beta... it won't take long to pick up a good off the shelf solution.


Personally... I have been holding off more streaming content as I despise Flash.


The big reason Flash isn't dead already is purely down to advertising metrics that can be counted in Flash... HTML5 solutions will develop PDQ.