Book Image

HTML5 Video How-To

By : Alex Libby
Book Image

HTML5 Video How-To

By: Alex Libby

Overview of this book

<p>Publishing videos online has been around for a number of years, although has really taken off with the advent of video sharing sites such as YouTube. The power of video is huge if done well; it can present a lot of information in a more visually engaging manner than using written text and pictures. Done badly though – it can present real problems to the company or individual hosting the video, that have the potential to cause some real harm!<br /><br />"HTML5 Video How-To" is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step exercises, which will help you take advantage of the real power that is behind HTML5 video, and give you a good grounding in using it in your web pages.<br /><br />This book looks at the HTML5 video formats available, and breaks down the mystery and confusion that surrounds which format to use. It will take you through a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you to take advantage of the new HTML5 video standard, quickly and painlessly. <br /><br />You will also learn how to build your own video player using jQuery, or by using one of the pre-built libraries available. We will also take a look at adding functionality such as lightbox effects, or subtitles, as well as how to publish videos to popular hosting sites, such as YouTube or VideoBin. If you want to take advantage of using the new HTML5 video format, then this is the book for you.<br /><br />You will learn everything you need to know to convert videos into the right format, as well as how to display them in your browser or web pages, across multiple platforms.</p>
Table of Contents (8 chapters)

Browser inconsistencies


To accommodate for some of the confusion still surrounding HTML5 video formats you, as a developer, will need to allow for a number of different platforms in order to ensure that support is kept as wide as possible, as shown in the following table:

Data is correct as at April 2012 with http://www.longtailvideo.com/html5 as the source.

The net result is that you will need to cater for several formats for video—the main ones now are WebM and MP4; you can also convert to Ogg Vorbis format, although this format is not so widely used.

Note

Please note that all of the tasks in this book are based on using Windows as the author's preferred platform—wherever possible, suggestions for equivalents on the Apple Mac platform are provided.

In this chapter, we're going to begin with converting your video masterpiece into a format suitable for use with HTML5 video.