Every now and then I will get asked to convert and upload videos. Depending on the target audience I would choose the best delivery method and of course what is going to be the easiest to style. This shouldn’t be difficult but it is a subject which has had a lot of attention, and of course everyone has an opinion. Now this isn’t a post saying why I prefer one method over the other, but is a note on how to correctly convert and publish videos. There is still loads of little issues with video and one which drives me crazy is when a video will play on one device but not the other, on one browser but not the other or even not at all.
Its a lot of work converting videos to find that they are missing meta data or are not compatible with mobile devices because of its viewing size. Below are a couple of sites which I eventually managed to find which takes you through and explains some of the common issues and how to properly convert your videos.
Dive into html5.org gives you and nice guide to HTML 5 video and converting your files using FireFog and Handbreak.
Camen Design.com have written a good article called “Video for everybody” which gives you another overview of HTML 5 video, h.264 video codec, how to deploy custom controls, and those common issues.
It will be great if everything just worked when it needed to and you only need one file instead of 3 or more. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hopefully these things will sort themselves out.