Video Formats help

[CyberNerd]

Hi All.

 

We are reviewing our video formats for moodle, with the aim to encode TV recordings and make them directly available on Moodle.

 

Ideally we want want to be rid of external codec like flash and play directly in HTML5, so we started looking at webm.

 

From what I gather webm plays naively in Chrome,Opera and Firefox - but only works in IE with a plugin (standards based, so no surprise here) it. It seems to work on Androids, Windows and Linux but not ipad. I can't seem to find anything that works across the board...

 

 

Could you guys test this for me please:

http://video.webmfiles.org/elephants-dream.webm

 

 

Does it play on your phone/browser? did you need any plugins or does it run natively?

I'm particularly interested in it working on ipads...

[SYNACK]

Mpeg4? Sure it is not 'free' but everything modern supports h264 and usually in hardware. Web is still expencive computationally and power wise so killing students battery life and the environment.

 

Webm also relies on googles limited benevolence so it is not up front as to whether there will be issues in future, whether they decide to defend it against patents or not is up for debate still and it still has the computational drawbacks.

 

Personally, do a YouTube. Keep both, h264 for efficiency, compatibility and, well everything then webm in case they mpeg group decide to become a problem.

[SYNACK]

Plays on nexus 7 unsurprisingly as it is there pet format, does not work on Windows Phone 7

[CyberNerd]

I don't think it is a specific google format - they bought it and released it as open source on a "worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free patent license" - so anyone can use it or change it.

 

So how many browsers will support h.264/mp4? All the ones that don't support webm? I'm leaning towards both h.264 and webm which might be a pain as its double the amount of space!

[Netman]

Works in Chrome and Firefox on Mac 10.8.2 Safari auto downloads it and when clicked it opens in FF and plays. IE9 on Win7 auto downloads and auto plays in VLC. Iphone 4S 'Safari cannot download this file'...

[Arthur]

http://s1.postimage.org/xsp2rwzf3/h264.png

 

http://s2.postimage.org/ntr8x1a95/webm.png

[CyberNerd]

Thanks. Thats useful.

 

So about 50/50 means I'll have to support both.

[CyberNerd]

ok. So I now have the export from MythTV encoding to both H.264/MP4 and VP8/webm

 

Seems to work on everything except for IE9 - which wants to download it into mediaplayer. Is there any format that IE can play? and will this work for windows mobile phone users - I don't really want to marginalise them - being a linux user >10yrs I know how it can feel being in a minority.

[HaleStorm]

FLV? thats what most youtube clips are played as according to Firebug?

[CyberNerd]

FLV? thats what most youtube clips are played as according to Firebug?

 

Trying to find the best format that is naively supported by the browser - I''m trying to avoid plugins, FLV only works on windows and mac nowadays. IE seems to be a bit of a pig as usual, but I don't know how that will pan out for w8 phones.

[Jamo]

I think the norm is to do it in 3 formats:

 

Video - Dive Into HTML5

 

This article explains it really well, tis a bit long but mostly goes through using handbrake or other converting software to do the conversion for you into the 3 formats required to give 100% (haha well ok 100% ish) browser compatability.

[Arthur]

@CyberNerd. Here's another website you will find useful...

 

The State Of HTML5 Video

 

With Mozilla caving in and supporting H.264 in Firefox and Opera creating a WebKit-based browser, I think you could probably get away with just MP4s.

 

http://i.imgur.com/8kQWnBW.png

 

Also, do you plan on using something like HTML5Media, VideoJS, SublimeVideo or MediaElement to handle falling back to a different video format?

Edited January 28, 2013 by Arthur

[CyberNerd]

Also, do you plan on using something like HTML5Media, VideoJS, SublimeVideo or MediaElement to handle falling back to a different video format?

 

That's a good plan.

 

Thing is - I don't seem to be able to get IE to play the MP4 at all - it just invokes a media player - I'll have another look at my command line tomorrow.

[Arthur]

Seems to work on everything except for IE9 - which wants to download it into mediaplayer.

Is the MIME type set correctly on your web server?

[CyberNerd]

Is the MIME type set correctly on your web server?

 

Good thinking. Probably not - it's a mythbuntu box used for testing. I'll run a test on the moodle server tomorrow.

[CyberNerd]

Also, do you plan on using something like HTML5Media, VideoJS, SublimeVideo or MediaElement to handle falling back to a different video format?

 

 

Actually - would moodle handle this itself?

[Arthur]

Actually - would moodle handle this itself?

There is a Moodle plug-in for HTML5 video called moodle-mplayer (based on JW Player), but I'm not sure if Moodle would do this natively.

[CyberNerd]

There is a Moodle plug-in for HTML5 video called moodle-mplayer (based on JW Player), but I'm not sure if Moodle would do this natively.

 

yeah I looked at that, I don't think it's going to work for what I want - and it's not been updated for a while with one dev.

[Arthur]

it's not been updated for a while with one dev.

Probably not a good idea then.

 

How did you get on with the videos in IE9?

[CyberNerd]

 

How did you get on with the videos in IE9?

 

Webserver seems ok I think it must be my avconv commands - but I got heavily distracted by moodle today.

does this play ok in IE and on WP8? http://www.808.dk/pics/video/gizmo.mp4

[CyberNerd]

 

How did you get on with the videos in IE9?

 

 

I think I noticed my mistake already. Because windows is such a ball ache to setup and maintain I only use it in a virtual machine for testing things then reverting the image to stop it turning to sludge. XP was running IE7 and W7 was on IE8.

Looks like the school has just dropped support for IE8.

[Arthur]

does this play ok in IE and on WP8?

The video works fine for me in IE9 and IE10 when embedded in a HTML page.

 

http://i.imgur.com/MrknXaK.png

 

 

Clicking the link to the video in post #20 prompts me to download it as a file.

 

http://i.imgur.com/zvWyi0q.png

 

For Windows Phone 8, you may be able to use the emulator in the SDK to test?

 

Looks like the school has just dropped support for IE8.

Good idea!

Edited January 29, 2013 by Arthur

[CyberNerd]

The video works fine for me in IE9 and IE10 when embedded in a HTML page.

 

Surely it shouldn't need to be embedded !?! - FF,Chrome,opera,android all seem to play it direct...

[SYNACK]

Opens fine via media player on wp7, is will be using the system default handler to open it, if you want is to handle it in browser you'll need to tell it so by embedding

[CyberNerd]

Opens fine via media player on wp7, is will be using the system default handler to open it, if you want is to handle it in browser you'll need to tell it so by embedding

 

ok. thats good to know.

I can see why web developers get so fed up with IE now, everything else seems to work seamlessly!