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html 5 video:
rich applications, yes. web video, maybe not…

Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 2:23 pm by Brian Ales

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HTML version 5 is coming. One of the more talked about aspects of the long-awaited update is the new <video> tag – and if this clip demonstrating Firefox 3.5 support is any indication, the technology will make for some exciting interactive web video possibilities.  While this would imply a challenge to the preeminence of Adobe’s Flash video technology, I feel that for passive web video viewing at least, Flash will be around for a while.

A few points:

  • HTML is not expected to be submitted to the W3C for standardization until at least 2012.
  • One of the primary technical advantages of Flash is that it’s agnostic as to the underlying compression format (“codec”) used.  While state-of-the-art H.263, H.264, or VP6 codecs can be used with Flash, it appears HTML5 will be limited to the open-source Ogg Theora/Vorbis codecs.
  • While Flash and Silverlight have followed Move Networks’ lead in developing the continuously variable bit-rate streaming (“adaptive bitrate streaming”) necessary for the streaming of HD video, this functionality requires a “stateful” server-side implementation.  As such, it’s simply not possible by just updating the HTML protocol and how the client (i.e. the web browser) supports it.

Where HTML 5 video will make a splash, though, is in the rich web application space – because while HD video (precisely what Flash enables) will become key to online video as a (passive) entertainment medium, user interactivity (precisely what HTML5 enables) will be key to web applications.

Google, for one, has a big stake in seeing web applications/cloud computing take off, and would love to see the browser (specifically Chrome) “become the operating system”.  As such, they’re big proponents of HTML5, and have even tested an HTML5 version of their (currently Flash-based) YouTube service.

That’s got to worry Adobe a bit.  However,  I think that for use cases in which interactivity is not paramount but eeking out every last bit of throughput from the available bandwidth is (i.e. HD web video),  Flash (as well as Silverlight and Move) will continue to be important.

  

3 Comments

What is the “Stateful” connection required for Move? They do their streaming over pure HTTP *without* any stateful connection (all pulled by the client side). There is no middle ‘streaming server’ which maintains a tunneled connection…

Comment by CuriousMan | June 25th, 2009 6:37 pm | Permalink

Hi,

I’m wondering about your 3rd point. Why would a stateful server-side implementation be a problem?

For example Silverlight’s Smooth Streaming uses the HTTP protocol which is stateless.

Comment by Arjen | June 26th, 2009 12:36 pm | Permalink

Mea Culpa – guilty of the sloppy (ok, wrong:-) use of the term ‘stateless’.

My point was that in order for a stream’s bitrate to ‘adapt’ to the fluctuating state of the client-server internet connection, one way or another there has to be some additional server-side functionality: either via a proprietary media server the client can handshake with and negotiate the appropriate bitrate with (i.e. Flash and Silverlight), or via a preliminary process involving encoding the video into proprietary multiple-bitrate streamlets and distributing them over multiple standard servers(i.e. Move).

In other words, either a ‘smart’ server or multiple ‘dumb’ servers – the development of a new HTML video tag and the associated client-side (browser) support for that tag (however impressive in terms of user interaction) alone cannot in and of itself enable adaptive bitrate streaming.

But yep, my bad – if it’s HTTP, it’s stateless.

Comment by Brian Ales | June 29th, 2009 6:02 am | Permalink



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