As more platforms like the iPad, Android, and Chrome are beginning to support H264 video through HTML5, we’ve moved forward with our own HTML5 video strategy. As a video aggregator, we’re deeply interested in enabling publishers to share their video content on as many platforms as possible. To that end, we’ve developed an embed strategy which can deliver HTML5 and Flash video content to almost every browser and device.
Using <object> tags with multiple fallbacks, this strategy can embed rich HTML5 video with advertising, source obfuscation, and custom controls, even where aggregators prohibit the use of <iframe>. Client side capabilities detection enables multiple HTML5 streams for clients which support those codecs, and falls back to Flash (or vice versa, falls back to HTML5 when Flash is unavailable). Embedded videos can be played in IE6, 7, 8, (and the IE9 preview), Firefox, Chrome, Safari, iPhone, and yes, even on the iPad.
As far as we know, Vodpod is the first to offer a single embed code for Flash and HTML5 video.
We’ve circulated our proposed embed code to many of the top players in the online video space, and the response is enthusiastic. We’re submitting the standard to you, the web community, in the hope of promoting an open video ecosystem. If you find this approach helpful, plan to use this approach, or have ideas on how to make it better, please let us know.
