For Desktop/Laptop browsing, most sites still playback the Flash version. The capability to dynamically detect device and serve as HTML5 or Flash is the most significant change in the video space, with mobile playback via HTML5 being the market driver.
I'd be interested in a breakdown of what contributes to those totals, sites like Youtube have a huge share in Video so it's not that out there to suggest that a single change they make could have such a huge impact internet wide. I know Youtube have been HTML5 for a while now so it isn't them, but it could be a similar site!
Edit: oh, I think I misread. They're counting individual videos, not sites. So while Youtube has HTML5 available to everyone not all videos support it. My mistake, disregard.
I'm going to call bullshit, on the basis on porn. I have yet to see a porn page that is using HTML5 instead of Flash for streaming their video. Unless in the past 2-3 years the percentage of porn to other videos online has changed significantly, or the entirety of the 46% is porn, that number seems really high.
I just googled 'html5 porn' and there was something about YouPorn switching to HTML5, but then I went and checked, no HTML5. In fact, not only was the video flash, but there were 3 flash-based ads on the page as well. Good way to eat processor and kill batteries.
You're probably mostly right, but I don't think a porn site is likely to advertise adoption of HTML5, so you might try looking at the mobile sites they serve up to see what tech they're using.
I suspect MeFeedia doesn't index porn sites, but I went ahead and asked in the comments.
I checked YP on my iPhone. Some videos were available.
I'm guessing until HTML5 with <video> support is more mainstream, sites that stream/host videos will target devices rather than browsers.
I'm guessing it's a lot of work (or resources) to re-encode your old videos (assuming they've got a copy somewhere), and not all companies are fortunate enough to be YouTube.
Re-encoding old videos from Flash to another format seems like a pretty basic hadoop-style problem that you could easily implement on EC2.
Of course this isn't free, but I remember reading something about NYT converting 100 years of archives to PDFs for a rather trivial amount of money (and time) by doing it this way.
I dunno, the first one that comes up (http://www.iphoneporngrid.com/) doesn't use html5 (XHTML strict instead) and doesn't use the <video> tag. Just points to .mp4 files.
The second (mobile.mofosex.com) is all the way back on HTML 4.01 Transitional. It too doesn't use the <video> tag, and is just pushing m4v files.
The third, (XHTML 1.0 Transitional) is about the same.
you need to be checking from an iOS device, not your desktop. I just checked YouPorn from my ipad (for research!) and it plays just fine.
EDIT: YouPorn, PornHub, Tube8, KeezMovies, ExtremeTube, Brazzers Mobile, all play videos fine on iPad, and that was just with 5 min of Googling. There appears to not be any shortage of mobile porn.
Saying "HTML5 Video" is misleading. There is no video encoding format for HTML5 video in the html5 spec. I could be using Firefox, which supports html5 video, go to a site that has html5 video in h264 format, then I can't see it, despite me using a html5 browser and the video being a html5 video.
Why reencode to WebM when the rest of the world can play flash.
Based on your "assumptions" it comes down to flash video for 99% of users vs html5+h264 for iDevices..
All in all it is just really sad that the major companies weren't able to agree on one common video format for html5 (thanks, Microsoft and Apple!).
What's the future now? Flash for Windows Phone, html5/h264 for iPhone, html5/webm for chrome and android, html5/ogg for firefox and i think opera should just go for html5/avi+intel indeo, maybe nokia could do html5/animated gif. (the sarcasm ends here, btw.)
My point is that thanks to Microsoft and Apple (who are both getting money from licensing H.264) we have no consistent video format and we will never have. MS and Apple will never support ogg or webm and Firefox will never support H.264 (which is the only decision they could have made from their point of view).
The dream of one consistent standard for the web that was HTML5 has been destroyed by some greedy corporations once again.
They get license fees for H.264. That's all management will need to know. They will tell us how there is no hardware acceleration and how H.264 has superior quality, when in reality they only want the money. The goal is that the defacto standard for web video becomes H.264. Imagine the income: When H.264 replaces all flash videos, they can leech money out of every device that plays those and everyone that makes those. That's PCs, tablets, phones, TVs and much more which equals a large amount of money.
That's why i said, it's a shame that there was no decision for one video codec in HTML5. They (the w3c/whatwg) should've went with "screw you all, the video codec is ogg(or webm). If your browsers don't support it they are not HTML5 compliant." Instead they went with "ok, fine. Everyone can do whatever he wants", willingly accepting that the bigger companies will go for the money decision and lock-out of competition. IE is still big enough to make the situation really bad.
MS will go the way of supporting other codecs through the windows API. But those codecs need to be installed, degrading them to 2nd class citizens and big video publishers will have to go the route of H.264 to not scare customers away with installing some non-default codec.
The irony: In the end, the better choice will be to atleast support flash videos, because flash is available almost everywhere, whereas the alternative is a much more fragmented HTML5 standard. In the end, this decision may have disrupted the goal to replace flash video with HTML5.
Yes, you are right but we had to draw a line somewhere (last time lots of people got confused). Let me bring up some ogg stats for you to add to the discussion: it is less than 1% in total.
Most people who use Firefox are doing so on a laptop/desktop with the Flash plug-in installed - in that case, video sites just use Flash.
I really do hate these "Flash hate-bait" narratives because it only regresses progress in making the video tag viable. Which is, above all else, the real goal.
HTML5 video does not support any sort of RTMP streaming. This is an undeniably important feature. Having to wait until a video loads before you can seek to a specific point is woefully disappointing for the end-user.
Not having a reliable base of encoding across all platforms is a real kick in the teeth as well.
RTMP is a terrible protocol to work with -- it is overdesigned and underspecified. RTSP is a much better alternative for video streaming. Unfortunately, none of the major browsers (yet) support rtsp:// streams in the audio/video tag.
In theory RTSP should be fairly easy for chromium, since it uses ffmpeg under the hood, which comes with a RTSP stack...
There is also http pseudostreaming, but that has its own set of problems too.
"Our final tally included only video that can be delivered within HTML5’s “video” tag. In the vast majority of cases, this means videos were encoded in H.264."
This is misleading because many providers use H.264 but don't have solutions for HTML5 video. Hulu for example uses a H.264 but uses a streaming server with drm protection on the stream that can only be played within the Flash player.
Plus the whole subset of "yes we support HTML5 video tags so it should work on your iPad/iPhone but we are banned from showing video on mobile devices so too bad." For instance, any music video on YouTube.
Sorry, but am I missing something? I'm currently watching a video on Vimeo with Safari 5 & plugins disabled. All you need to do is to click the "Switch to HTML5 player" link.
41 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadFor Desktop/Laptop browsing, most sites still playback the Flash version. The capability to dynamically detect device and serve as HTML5 or Flash is the most significant change in the video space, with mobile playback via HTML5 being the market driver.
Edit: oh, I think I misread. They're counting individual videos, not sites. So while Youtube has HTML5 available to everyone not all videos support it. My mistake, disregard.
For my application, I need to be able to embed the video in the page and support looping. Here's my experience with HTML5 video at this point:
- IE: don't bother until IE9 is stable. I anticipate some stupid bug/feature that requires pages for IE9 to be different
- Firefox: don't bother. I'm not supporting two codecs and h264 will work everywhere but ff soon.
- Chrome: there's still a bug in the looping code -- can't really us it.
- Safari: Works.
- Android: doesn't work reliably -- stick with flash.
- Mobile Safari: pops the video into the video player and not actually on the page. I fall back to animated gifs here.
So, for my application, about 4% of the browsers can actually use HTML5 video.
I just googled 'html5 porn' and there was something about YouPorn switching to HTML5, but then I went and checked, no HTML5. In fact, not only was the video flash, but there were 3 flash-based ads on the page as well. Good way to eat processor and kill batteries.
I suspect MeFeedia doesn't index porn sites, but I went ahead and asked in the comments.
Here's an idea: PornForGeeks. HTML5 valid, HTML5 <video>, strong use of semantic tagging, 'smarter' ads, strong query engine, etc
I'm guessing until HTML5 with <video> support is more mainstream, sites that stream/host videos will target devices rather than browsers.
I'm guessing it's a lot of work (or resources) to re-encode your old videos (assuming they've got a copy somewhere), and not all companies are fortunate enough to be YouTube.
Of course this isn't free, but I remember reading something about NYT converting 100 years of archives to PDFs for a rather trivial amount of money (and time) by doing it this way.
The second (mobile.mofosex.com) is all the way back on HTML 4.01 Transitional. It too doesn't use the <video> tag, and is just pushing m4v files.
The third, (XHTML 1.0 Transitional) is about the same.
In fact it took until the 7th result to get an HTML5 page (mobile.bangyoulater.com). Of course, it doesn't validate. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://mobile.bangyoulater... Really sloppy coding imho. It doesn't use the video tag however.
In fact, I wasn't able to find a single thing on the first page of Google that was:
1) HTML5 2) Used HTML5 for its video
with a special bonus star for one that validated. Not a single one.
EDIT: YouPorn, PornHub, Tube8, KeezMovies, ExtremeTube, Brazzers Mobile, all play videos fine on iPad, and that was just with 5 min of Googling. There appears to not be any shortage of mobile porn.
All in all it is just really sad that the major companies weren't able to agree on one common video format for html5 (thanks, Microsoft and Apple!).
What's the future now? Flash for Windows Phone, html5/h264 for iPhone, html5/webm for chrome and android, html5/ogg for firefox and i think opera should just go for html5/avi+intel indeo, maybe nokia could do html5/animated gif. (the sarcasm ends here, btw.)
My point is that thanks to Microsoft and Apple (who are both getting money from licensing H.264) we have no consistent video format and we will never have. MS and Apple will never support ogg or webm and Firefox will never support H.264 (which is the only decision they could have made from their point of view).
The dream of one consistent standard for the web that was HTML5 has been destroyed by some greedy corporations once again.
My hope is that WebM takes off and becomes really popular. Then they would be fools to not support it.
They get license fees for H.264. That's all management will need to know. They will tell us how there is no hardware acceleration and how H.264 has superior quality, when in reality they only want the money. The goal is that the defacto standard for web video becomes H.264. Imagine the income: When H.264 replaces all flash videos, they can leech money out of every device that plays those and everyone that makes those. That's PCs, tablets, phones, TVs and much more which equals a large amount of money.
That's why i said, it's a shame that there was no decision for one video codec in HTML5. They (the w3c/whatwg) should've went with "screw you all, the video codec is ogg(or webm). If your browsers don't support it they are not HTML5 compliant." Instead they went with "ok, fine. Everyone can do whatever he wants", willingly accepting that the bigger companies will go for the money decision and lock-out of competition. IE is still big enough to make the situation really bad. MS will go the way of supporting other codecs through the windows API. But those codecs need to be installed, degrading them to 2nd class citizens and big video publishers will have to go the route of H.264 to not scare customers away with installing some non-default codec.
The irony: In the end, the better choice will be to atleast support flash videos, because flash is available almost everywhere, whereas the alternative is a much more fragmented HTML5 standard. In the end, this decision may have disrupted the goal to replace flash video with HTML5.
Most people who use Firefox are doing so on a laptop/desktop with the Flash plug-in installed - in that case, video sites just use Flash.
HTML5 video does not support any sort of RTMP streaming. This is an undeniably important feature. Having to wait until a video loads before you can seek to a specific point is woefully disappointing for the end-user.
Not having a reliable base of encoding across all platforms is a real kick in the teeth as well.
Also, since HTTP 1.1 we have byte ranges, so in combination of above point, you can freely seek with HTTP-streamed videos.
In theory RTSP should be fairly easy for chromium, since it uses ffmpeg under the hood, which comes with a RTSP stack...
There is also http pseudostreaming, but that has its own set of problems too.
That isn't true.
This is misleading because many providers use H.264 but don't have solutions for HTML5 video. Hulu for example uses a H.264 but uses a streaming server with drm protection on the stream that can only be played within the Flash player.
http://imgur.com/xrdlF.png (To watch this video, you need Flash 10. You have an old version of Flash. Click here to download the latest version.)
and there's no trace of <video> element in the source.
They only use HTML5 as a workaround for browsers with "iP" in User-Agent string.