Recently a client asked me to put up a video on her new website. The one thing I knew for certain was my solution had to be HTML5 friendly, but also backwards-compatible for all the clientele still using IE (well, IE7 & 8 – I’ve mostly given up on IE6). When I first started coding HTML, RealAudio was the solution everybody used, now a lot of video is Flash-based. But wait, Flash isn’t exactly a universal solution.
I started my research with the Video chapter of Dive Into HTML5. After reading, I knew that no one format of video was going to work. I also needed a player that would be easy to integrate.
I found a list of HTML5 players on this HTML5 Video Player comparison page and looked for one that was free, open-source, had flash fallback and was easy to integrate and theme. My choice was Projekktor. There might be better ones, but I had limited time to play around with different players and this one had good documentation. Next, I had to find an encoder… or two or three.