The best video for web browsers
03/11/10 22:14
What’s the best format of video to use for web delivery and browser compatibility? It depends on your audience.
The short answer is either Quicktime or Flash. Now the long answer...
When we talk about video formats, these days what we really are talking about is the wrapper. Think of it this way: you can buy a flat screen TV that has the Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc., brand on it, but chances are the guts are the same. In the same way, most videos today have the same guts.
The de facto standard guts, or codec (codec is short for COmpression/DECompression) is h.264 as part of the MPEG-4 family. MPEG-4 is found on Bluray discs, and is the most efficient and ubiquitous codec for web delivery. It looks pretty amazing! So, chances are if you are watching a video online, the format underneath the hood is MPEG-4. It might be called a Quicktime movie. Or you might be watching a YouTube video. Before it was packaged as these, it was probably exported or captured as the h.264 variation of MPEG-4.
Quicktime used to be a Mac-only wrapper. Now it can be easily downloaded for PCs.
Flash is found on just about every new computer sold today. And it’s easy to download if you don’t have it already. Also, Flash is what you see on YouTube, Facebook, etc. Flash has a 75% market share (according to Adobe). BUT, Flash is not available for 6.4 million Americans! Who are these unlucky folks? iPhone users. And some other smartphone users.
Flash is not supported on the iPhone. It’s a competitive move by Apple. However, iPhone users can watch videos on websites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook because these sites have separate webpages made especially for iPhone users.
That brings us to the answer to the original question. If you want to reach everyone, then you need to make separate web pages (and therefore videos in Flash and Quicktime wrappers), and you need your website to be smart enough to know what type of device is being used to view it. But, before you go out and redo your entire website, there might be some rumblings that will change everything.
A new Safari plug-in for the iPhone is called Skyfire, and it will trancode Flash movies into a format that iPhones will display: HTML5.
So, if iPhones can read HTML5, and HTML5 is supposed to be universal, why not just make movies in HTML5 format to begin with? Well, it is not easy to implement. And Internet Explorer version 8 and below (the most recent version is 9), will not play HTML5 video. Aargh!
My honest opinion: Quicktime has always been a higher quality wrapper. But Quicktime has issues on the PC (from personal experience). I create most of my videos using Quicktime, and then export a h.264 movie to upload to the web. I use a service like Vimeo to showcase my videos. On a web browser on a PC Vimeo displays Flash. On an iPhone Vimeo displays Quicktime. Slick. Somehow, Vimeo knows what type of device or browser you are using, and streams the best video format.
The short answer is either Quicktime or Flash. Now the long answer...
When we talk about video formats, these days what we really are talking about is the wrapper. Think of it this way: you can buy a flat screen TV that has the Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc., brand on it, but chances are the guts are the same. In the same way, most videos today have the same guts.
The de facto standard guts, or codec (codec is short for COmpression/DECompression) is h.264 as part of the MPEG-4 family. MPEG-4 is found on Bluray discs, and is the most efficient and ubiquitous codec for web delivery. It looks pretty amazing! So, chances are if you are watching a video online, the format underneath the hood is MPEG-4. It might be called a Quicktime movie. Or you might be watching a YouTube video. Before it was packaged as these, it was probably exported or captured as the h.264 variation of MPEG-4.
Quicktime used to be a Mac-only wrapper. Now it can be easily downloaded for PCs.
Flash is found on just about every new computer sold today. And it’s easy to download if you don’t have it already. Also, Flash is what you see on YouTube, Facebook, etc. Flash has a 75% market share (according to Adobe). BUT, Flash is not available for 6.4 million Americans! Who are these unlucky folks? iPhone users. And some other smartphone users.
Flash is not supported on the iPhone. It’s a competitive move by Apple. However, iPhone users can watch videos on websites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook because these sites have separate webpages made especially for iPhone users.
That brings us to the answer to the original question. If you want to reach everyone, then you need to make separate web pages (and therefore videos in Flash and Quicktime wrappers), and you need your website to be smart enough to know what type of device is being used to view it. But, before you go out and redo your entire website, there might be some rumblings that will change everything.
A new Safari plug-in for the iPhone is called Skyfire, and it will trancode Flash movies into a format that iPhones will display: HTML5.
So, if iPhones can read HTML5, and HTML5 is supposed to be universal, why not just make movies in HTML5 format to begin with? Well, it is not easy to implement. And Internet Explorer version 8 and below (the most recent version is 9), will not play HTML5 video. Aargh!
My honest opinion: Quicktime has always been a higher quality wrapper. But Quicktime has issues on the PC (from personal experience). I create most of my videos using Quicktime, and then export a h.264 movie to upload to the web. I use a service like Vimeo to showcase my videos. On a web browser on a PC Vimeo displays Flash. On an iPhone Vimeo displays Quicktime. Slick. Somehow, Vimeo knows what type of device or browser you are using, and streams the best video format.
