As part of the work we do in NUUG +to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a +page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a +good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all +browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this +will become easier when the <video> tag is implemented in all +browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several +formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the +browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the +recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand. +There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5 +<video> tag, the <object> tag, the <embed> tag and +the <applet> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and +finding the best options is a major challenge.
+ +I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from labs.opera.com, to see how it handled +a <video> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes. +I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture +from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is +definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next, +instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all +of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait +for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download +is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the +download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I +discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able +to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding +autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the +test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the +<video> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start +playing when the download is done.
+ +The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is +available +from the nuug site. Will have to test it with the new Firefox +too.
+ +In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable +to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I +am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I +sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
+ +