HTML5 Video File Conversions

I think the best part of HTML5 Video is getting to convert the source file into a billion different formats for all the browsers (note: sarcasm). For a while I was struggling with Adobe's Media Encoder, trying to get that to do my work. It never really rose to the challenge.

Recently I've been using Adobe just for the FLV/FLA files (for flash fall-back) and then using Miro's video converter for the rest. It works a lot better, but is still not fool proof. I've found that the iPad and iPhone formats are still a little hit or miss when I test on the various iOS versions out there. What I like about Miro, though, is that I don't need to tune every parameter for the mp4. All I do is pick iPad and it takes care of the rest. Beautiful.

Another option is zencoder which has a nice API you can use. This would be a great option if you had to convert uploaded video or if you had a ton of video and you wanted to programmatically convert it. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Flowplayer Flash Video and SetReturnValue

I recently set up a HTML5 video system with flash video fallback, for those crazy people with old browsers. VideoJS.com is a great site for explaining how to do this. Use this with the site with the info here for a great solution.

Anyway, the flash fall back using Flowplayer commercial was giving me a bunch of issues on IE7 & IE8. One was there was an error that was being logged in the console about 'SetReturnValue' not being defined. Turns out, the <object> tag must have an ID. The example code I copied from VideoJs's front page didn't have this. So, make sure you have a unique id set.

The other issue had to do with Flowplayer's branding removal (with a commercial license). Turns out, the registered domain name is not for the domain the video is being played on, but the domain the swf file is loaded from. I had the swf files on a CDN and the branding was not removed. Just had to move it back to the main site and all was good.