HTML5 Video

[SGT Oddball]

There’s been a lot of posting about video and video formats on the web recently. This is a good opportunity to talk Microsoft’s point of view.

The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

H.264 is an industry standard, with broad and strong hardware support. Because of this standardization, you can easily take what you record on a typical consumer video camera, put it on the web, and have it play in a web browser on any operating system or device with H.264 support (e.g. a PC with Windows 7). Recently, we publicly showed IE9 playing H.264-encoded video from YouTube. You can read about the benefits of hardware acceleration here, or see an example of the benefits at the 26:35 mark here. For all these reasons, we’re focusing our HTML5 video support on H.264.

Other codecs often come up in these discussions. The distinction between the availability of source code and the ownership of the intellectual property in that available source code is critical. Today, intellectual property rights for H.264 are broadly available through a well-defined program managed by MPEG LA. The rights to other codecs are often less clear, as has been described in the press. Of course, developers can rely on the H.264 codec and hardware acceleration support of the underlying operating system, like Windows 7, without paying any additional royalty.

Today, video on the web today is predominantly Flash-based. While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer

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[Zepher]

I can't stand flash. I can't wait for html5 to be standardized on all browsers'

 

[JMH]

IE9 HTML5 Video H.264 Content Only.

When Internet Explorer 9 was introduced in mid-March 2010, Microsoft promised that support for HTML5 <video> would be added in a future release. In fact, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager, Internet Explorer, demonstrated an upcoming development Build of IE9 featuring HTML5 <video> support at MIX10, indicating that Microsoft still had some details to iron out. One such detail indicated the video compression standard that IE9 would support in the context of HTML5. On April 29th, 2010, Hachamovitch revealed that IE9 would play nice with the H.264 codec, and only H.264.

“The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only,” the IE GM noted.

More..
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) HTML5 Video H.264 Content Only - HTML5 < video > planned for a future Preview of IE9 - Softpedia

 

[Win7User512]

Funny. H.264 is the format for Silverlight video too...

 

[JMH]

HTML5 video in IE 9: H.264 and H.264 alone.

Microsoft has put its stake in the ground and committed to supporting H.264 in Internet Explorer 9. That the next browser version would support H.264 HTML5 video was no surprise (though the current Platform Preview doesn't include it, it was shown off at MIX10), but this is the first time that Microsoft has provided a rationale for its decision. More significantly, this is the first time the company has confirmed that H.264 will be the only video codec supported.

H.264 certainly has some advantages. It's standardized, resulting in wide support in both software and hardware. This also provies a migration path of sorts from Adobe Flash; the same H.264 video file can be played both in Flash and via the native browser support, which allows site owners to target both HTML5 and Flash users with a single codec. But the biggest advantage cited by Microsoft was intellectual property: the IP behind H.264 can be licensed through a program managed by MPEG LA. Other codecs—the blog post named no names, but Theora is obviously the most widespread alternative for HTML5 video—may have source availability, but they can't offer the same clear IP rights situation.

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HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9: H.264 and H.264 alone