Video interview: Robert Reinhardt on HTML5 video
Robert Reinhardt… He wrote The Book… The Bible… Of Flash that is. Robert is also a streaming video expert and has been working a lot with HTML5 video recently. I asked him about his experiences with HTML5 for video.
Video interview: Grant Skinner on HTML5
You probably know Grant Skinner from all his amazing Flash work. Recently Grant has been experimenting a lot with HTML5 and he also worked on PiratesLoveDaisies.com, a tower defense game built with HTML5 and Javascript. At FITC in Amsterdam I asked him about his experiences with HTML5 and his thoughts on the HTML5 vs Flash “war”.
Video interview: Paul Gubbay on Adobe and HTML5
So… What has Adobe done so far for HTML5?
I asked Paul Gubbay – Adobe’s VP for product development for web, design and interactive – that very question.
Stealing content was never easier than with HTML5
HTML5 makes adding video and audio content to your site very easy but there is currently no way to protect that content. If we’re all completely honest we know that content protection is still a big deal for record companies, movie studios, and TV channels, yet HTML5 puts their content just up for grabs. Let me give you a few examples.
Unnamed video site
Video site X just rolled out a brand new HTML5 video player. Like I said, HTML5 makes it really easy to add video content to your site but it makes it equally easy to download that content. It only takes a “view source” to find the URL to the video file. Some video sites have also noticed that and are now building custom JavaScript based players in an attempt to make it more difficult to get to the video file. On this one site I counted almost 3000 lines of JavaScript code for a rather basic video player with sharing functionality. 3000 lines of code and it still only took me three clicks to download the video file! I already hear some of you saying that you can also easily get the video file from a Flash based video player. If you use progressive download that is completely true. I’ll get back to that later in this post.
Unnamed new music discovery site
The release of the beta version of this new music discovery site is actually what sparked the idea to write this post. As per usual the tech blogs were buzzing about it as a new music discovery site that didn’t use Flash because Flash is dead. So I checked it out… This particular site gives you unrestricted access to the entire music library. I was able to look up any artist and play back any song in high quality… I can also buy the song on the site for the industry standard $0.99. But with just two clicks I was able to download any song from any artist straight to my desktop without actually buying it. No need for torrents or the risk of downloading viruses. It’s all right there on this official music discovery site in high quality AAC audio (in an M4A file).
Flash
I already mentioned that it’s also pretty easy to download a file used in a Flash based media player if the site uses progressive download. The difference between HTML5 and Flash in this case is that you CAN protect your content when using Flash. As there still is no standard audio/video codec in the HTML5 spec there also is no way to stream video and audio content using HTML5 across different browsers. Companies (including Apple) have been experimenting with streaming technologies but I’m sure you remember that that only worked in a specific version of Safari on a specific version of iOS. The HTML5 spec also has no guidelines for any sort of content protection.
Flash does work cross browser and cross platform (as I’m sure all of you know). With the use of Flash Media Server you can also completely protect that content and get the added benefits of features such as adaptive streaming (to adapt to changing connection speeds), reduced bandwidth usage, DRM, multicasting, peer to peer delivery, and more. Bottom line: Flash is still the best platform to stream (premium) video and audio content.
Game developer: “Why I’m Moving From HTML5 To Flash”
No… That’s not a typo. Yes… You read that correctly. This game developer is dropping HTML5 in favor of Flash!
These guys are working on a game that recently got a lot of attention on Reddit and Twitter. The prototype is written in HTML5/JS but they are now abandoning HTML5 and are moving to Flash!
Their main concerns are the “spotty” browser support, slow performance and the fact that there is no ecosystem for selling HTML5 games.
Is html5 the future? I sure hope so! Unfortunately, it isn’t the present.
Full story on http://blog.tametick.com/2011/01/why-im-moving-from-html5-to-flash.html
HTML5 and Flash play along just fine in Sour’s “Mirror” music video
It’s not about which technology you pick! It’s about what you do with it! This online music video from Japanese band Sour is a perfect example of how HTML5 and Flash can play along just fine. I already said this once before but it’s great to see that people are starting to realize that HTML5 and Flash can greatly complement each other.
It’s really hard to explain what the music video does and looks like. You’re just gonna have to try it yourself! The site does ask you to log in to Facebook and Twitter and even asks you to connect your webcam but it’s all good. It won’t start spamming your Facebook/Twitter followers and the webcam integration is actually a lot of fun. At the end of the video you can even download an image of yourself in the video.
It’s great to see that one of the developers behind this is Saqoosha who you may know from FLARtoolkit fame. I just saw that he’s playing around with a Microsoft Kinect AS3 library!
One quick little anecdote: It was funny to see that Engadget originally titled their blog post about it with “Sour’s Mirror HTML5 music video is absolutely wild” saying it was all built with just HTML5. I’m glad they saw that they were wrong, changed the title and added this to the post: “It’s stunning. Why can’t HTML5 and Flash always play this nicely together?”.
Let’s make 2011 the year we all get along and focus on creativity and great user experiences instead of focusing on one technology killing the other. Deal?
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