Earlier this year, we met with Jeroen "JW" Wijering, Chief Digital Architect of LongTail Video at his office in New York City, to talk about the growing interest of HTML5 video and the most pressing issues facing its adoption. Jeroen is an online video pioneer and the creator of the ubiquitous JW Media Players, which have generated several million downloads since their launch in 2005. In a post on the Longtail Community Support Blog (and also a guest post on Reel SEO), Jeroen wrote: "The video tag is still in its infancy and misses certain core functionalities. As developers demand these features, browser vendors are tempted to implement incompatible solutions instead of agreeing upon standards. These hasty developments, already underway, are setting HTML video up for the same chaos as HTML styling in the pre-CSS era." Jeroen says, the most pressing issues facing HTML video development are: * Codecs - H.264 versus OGG debate is ongoing, but all browsers have placed their bets - Firefox and Opera favor OGG, Internet Explorer and Safari choose H264. Chrome plays it safe and does both. Today's HTML5 video format is H264. * Streaming - HTML5 does not specify a streaming mechanism yet. While this is being worked on (W3C: Fragments, Media Multitrack API), it means that live, DVR and long-form video content cannot be played using a video tag. * Fullscreen - While a small feature at first sight, fullscreen playback is essential to the success of HTML5 video. Fullscreen video captivates the viewer, greatly enhancing the visual experience, and tends to increase viewer engagement. Without fullscreen, HTML5 video is mostly useful for presenting short clips. Jeroen pointed out that cross-browser support should be practical and compatible, or we risk web development regression. "Browser vendors should be stringent when building solutions that are both practical and compatible. If not, crossbrowser HTML5 video will be too difficult, not to mention expensive, to implement. This presents the ... Distributed by Tubemogul.
