Open Source HTML5 Video Player with WebM/VP8 (from Zencoder, YC W10) | Hacker News Reader

Open Source HTML5 Video Player with WebM/VP8 (from Zencoder, YC W10)

video-js.com

111 pointsHeff23 comments

Also, to shamelessly plug my own work: http://flarevideo.com - Open Source HTML5 Video player (with Flash fallback).

That's a very nice player -- it's actually more visually impressive than most of the flash-based players out there. Two criticisms, though:

1. The full-screen button in the default theme looks like two arrows pointing together, which to me does not say "full screen". It says "make something smaller".

2. The scaling really slowed down my (slightly old) version of Chrome. I blame Chrome for this, but I just wanted to report the issue.

Again, congratulations on making an excellent and useful piece of software.

1. Yes, just copying the default mac quicktime/itunes controls - I agree though, a bit counter intuitive.

2. Hopefully soon Chrome will support the webkitEnterFullScreen API, like the WebKit nightlies - then it'll run great.

Thanks

Cool, I like the skin options. Let me suggest some help.

FlareVideo doesn't play on the iPhone (at least not mine). Make sure you're using the baseline encoding profile for h.264. iPhone won't play anything else.

In your example you fall back to Flash for every browser but Safari. You should probably have Ogg and WebM versions as well. You can encode to Ogg most places. Zencoder is probably still your best bet for WebM/VP8.

You should also consider using the Video for Everyone embed code by Kroc Camen.

Hope that helps. Nice start. I'd love to have your help on VideoJS. :)

> I'd love to have your help on VideoJS.

Why don't you message MacMann and talk about it? If you're both working in the same space there could be a lot of benefits to working together.

IE6 doesn't fall back and produces a Javascript error (I'm at work and GhettoBrowser is our 'standard'). Works great in Chrome of course.

Would be nice if the <esc> button was bound to leave-full-screen.

Can someone explain to me why we need these solutions? Shouldn't everything just gracefully fall back anyways (with the exception of Firefox and H.264, that is)?

The initial purpose for an HTML5 player is a consistent player look between browsers, as well as some additional functionality not built into the browsers' default players yet (e.g. full-window/fullscreen modes.) I imagine with time these libraries will expand to have a lot more of the functionality you can currently find in many flash video players.

The basic things they offer is a consistent UI across browser implementations of HTML5 video and Flash, plus a way to organize fallbacks to give the right thing to each browser.

I got the video to play on my iPad but couldn't get it to show the controls again after fullscreen. Any idea why?

Working on a fix for this. It's a problem with fixed positioning on the iPad.

Does this handle <audio> playback too?

Proper handling of audio codecs and fallback, a playback widget, and perhaps loading an image into the video section, would suit my needs quiet well.

Maybe next weekend I'll try to add this myself.

hmm, sometimes I wonder how two (almost exactly the same) titles to the same story can have such different receptions.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1370616

It seems that HTML5 will force people to allow embedding Javascript. How will we be able to avoid cross-site scripting attacks this way?

I didn't have to enable javascript to play the video (chromium), all you have to do is create the video element and load the source. Then all extra commands can be loaded with javascript.

How, why? Why not just host the Javascript yourself to prevent XSS attacks.

I'm missing something here - why would this be less secure then any other JS lib?

Very nice, love it! I got to say, just as good as flash in quality and much less weight

How about a SWF -> JS Compiler for added performance?

I don't think there's any SWF to compile - the idea is to replace Flash using WebM content and a great HTML player instead, not (like the other project posted today) a replacement that uses the existing content with a great HTML player.

Fullscreen video plays like shit in latest stable Firefox, video has no sound.

Playback is ok in latest Chrome, fullscreen is in-window, so no real fullscreen.

And people say HTML5 is the future now? I just hope those players that have a 'fall-back' to Flash allow you to set the Flash version as the default one.

How do I disable HTML5?

> Fullscreen video plays like shit in latest stable Firefox, video has no sound. I'm pretty sure that it's a known issue.

> Playback is ok in latest Chrome, fullscreen is in-window, so no real fullscreen. Webkit has implemented a fullscreen api, and it's being added to the latest dev chromium.

> And people say HTML5 is the future now? I just hope those players that have a 'fall-back' to Flash allow you to set the Flash version as the default one. > How do I disable HTML5?

Alright, why don't you develop a cross compatible, open standard that has agreement from Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, and Opera? Why don't you just whip out a fresh new coded, that supports: playback, streaming media, multiple bit-rates, text overlays (captions), accessibility (for screen readers), multiple langauge apis (captions, text overlays), and without patents or copyrights over the codec.

The "HTML5 video sucks" argument is bull, HTML5 is still a developmental specification, it's NOT a standard. Being that it's still in development assuming that it will work flawlessly would be like assuming some beta (or alpha) level product would work without bugs. Give HTML5 until the end of the year (2010) and then see where the progress is.

> Playback is ok in latest Chrome, fullscreen is in-window, so no real fullscreen.

Hit F11 and you'll get real fullscreen. Fullscreen api for html5 video is in the work, they are aware of the issue.

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