A Brief History of Web Video
From the early 1990’s until around 2004, video on the internet was a developing technology. Codecs were created and companies experimented with marketing and usability. By 2004 video on the internet exploded with over 14 billion views for the year. This was the beginning of the YouTube era. Google and YouTube changed the game forever. 4 years later video views sky rocketed from 14 billion per year to 14 billion per month. In 2009 services such as Quick.tv introduced ways to make video more interactive. Of course, Youtube has done the same using what they call Annotations.
Attempts to Standardize Video
This article on CNET discusses HTML5 and the various video codec wars surrounding its implementation. Google is controlling the standardization of HTML5 video and they are pushing the H.264 codec as the new standard. Mozilla, a popular open source web browser, is asking for Ogg Theora support. Unfortunately, this codec may not be included. The argument against the H.264 codec is its $5 million licensing fee. Open source software companies will fight to prevent this from becoming a standard.
The conversations surrounding the standardization of HTML5 focus on the technology and its cost. This introverted thinking creates pride in how products are built as opposed to how products are used. This continues to fragment web standards. The browser wars has evolved into a technology war.
The Missing Link
Two quotes in the CNET article sum up the nature of the internet standards perfectly:
Most Web sites will have to protect users from this confusion by checking what browser they’re using and delivering an appropriately formatted Web page. If a desired HTML5 video format isn’t supported, the Web page can fall back to Flash.
But HTML5 video offers some mechanisms for tighter integration with the Web page than Flash. To take advantage of that, developers would have to offer substantially different versions of their Web pages–one with the integration and one without it.
Web pages do not “Fall back” to Flash. Flash falls back to web pages.
Everyone wants a standardized web. Flash Player is designed, developed, and delivered by Adobe. It is closed source with a single development language, ActionScript. It has offered one of the most stable development environments on the internet for nearly 10 years.
The most beneficial aspect of Flash is the community behind it. An open source community working together to make Flash development quick and painless.
Putting It All Together
The Flash community is largely open source. Why is this? Flash is extremely difficult to learn, program, and implement. So, once again, the majority of developers have taken it upon themselves to solve this issue. Each with their own solutions – moving the focus from product to process.
nothingGrinder bridges the gap with a rapid Flash development platform that can deliver stunning usable websites to all devices. Our platform is intended to eliminate the development process all together. Allowing developers to get back to what really matters, building Cool websites that do everything.
In this new age of Social Media Enlightenment we’re on the bleeding edge of the trends. We’ve surpassed theory and we’re right into practice – so if you’re a Media/Design agency who wants to supply their clients with the best the web has to offer or an SME looking to get in on the best way to distribute your content on the web – please do get in touch!
Links to references
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-10439048-248.html
http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10428278-264.html
http://www.wired.com/video/the-future-of-web-video/1757545678
http://motionographer.com/2009/01/05/fast-forward-the-future-of-web-video/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10440430-264.html
