Is this a titanic battle for the future of the moving image? The very fabric of the how video is delivered is apparently up for grabs, with the struggle to decide the future framework for its delivery, increasingly obvious and palpable.
Perhaps the biggest name in online video, YouTube, recently weighed into this arena with some opinions of its own. YouTube is owned by Google so its opinions cannot be viewed as entirely politically neutral, but either way their opinons and position represent a major online-video stakeholder.
A recent post by Software Engineer John Harding to YouTube's API Blog really gets to the heart of the video struggle – HTML5 vs. Flash. With the recent buzz around HTML5, and Apple's refusal to add flash support to its now ubiquitous iPhonePadPod, many have talked about the future of video on the web no longer relying on plugins to function. However the currently flash-heavy YouTube seems to suggest the future is not so black and white:
” .. while the <video> tag is a big step forward for open standards, the Adobe Flash Platform will continue to play a critical role in video distribution.” – Harding
It seems that with YouTube's extensive tests with HTML5, they feel there are a number of reasons why the wholesale change to a simple <video> tag will not currently deliver all the requirements of a site like YouTube. The points raised in the blog post are wide-ranging and varied, spanning the technicalities of a lack of an established video format, to issues potentially generated by a lack of content protection and the ever-popular embedding features. It seems the future of 'pluginless' video is some way off, yet it's hard not to be excited that this <video> tag seems to be a significant step in the right direction. YouTube however leaves us in no doubt over their current position:
” Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.” – Harding
The full blog post can be found on YouTube's API Blog and is well worth a read.
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