HTML 5 <video> tag vs Flash video. What are

Question

IMPORTANT UPDATE

This question was made over 9 years ago. It made sense then, it doesn't make it now. Flash is hard on its way out; <video> support is ubiquitous, including mobile devices. Almost anything that Flash could do, HTML can now do too. HTML won, Flash lost. If you're pondering on how to embed video in your page, just use <video> and don't give it a second thought. This question is only preserved for historical value.

Original question

Seems like the new <video> tag is all the hype these days, especially since Firefox now supports it. News of this are popping up in blogs all over the place, and everyone seems to be excited. But what about?

As much as I searched I could not find anything that would make it better than the good old Flash video. In fact, I see only problems with it:

• It will still be some time before all the browsers start supporting it, and much more time before most people upgrade;
• Flash is available already and everyone has it;
• You can couple Flash with whatever fancy UI you want for controlling the playback. I gather that the tag will be controllable as well (via JavaScript probably), but will it be able to go fullscreen?

The only two pros for a <video> tag that I can see are:

• It is more "semantic" - which probably holds no importance to a whole lot of people, including me;
• It is not dependent on a single commercial 3rd party entity (Adobe) - which I also don't see as a compelling reason to switch, because free players and video converters are already available, and Adobe is not hindering the whole process in any way (it's not in their interests even).

So... what's the big deal?

Added:

OK, so there is one more Pro... maybe. Support for mobile devices. Hard to say though. A number of thoughts race through my head about the subject:

• How many mobile devices are actually able to decode video at a decent speed anyway, Flash or otherwise?
• How long until mainstream mobile devices get the <video> support? Even if it is available through updates, how many people actually do that?
• How many people watch videos on web pages on their mobile phones at all?

As for the semantics part - I understand that search engines might be able to detect videos better now, but... what will they do with them anyway? OK, so they know that there is a video in the page. And? They can't index a video! I'd like some more arguments here.

Added:

Just thought of another Cons. This opens up a whole new area of cross-browser incompatibility. HTML and CSS is quite messy already in this aspect. Flash at least is the same everywhere. But it's enough for at least one major browser vendor to decide against the <video> tag (can anyone say "Internet Explorer"?) and we have a nice new area of hell to explore.

Added:

A Pro just came in. More competition = more innovation. That's true. Giving Adobe more competition will probably force them to improve Flash in areas it has been lacking so far. Linux seems to be a weak spot for it, cited by many.

Answer 1

Flash is controlled by a single company. That company can decide exactly what to do with the future of Flash and nobody else can affect it. Let's say, for example, that they (Adobe) suddenly decide charging a license fee for using Flash. What would happen to all the millions of web sites depending on it?

We need taking action, and that is now. We must use open standards, and we do need it badly. That's the only thing that makes the tag bleeding important to the world.

(Licensing fee for Flash might or might not seem like a realistic move from Adobe, but that does not matter. My point is that they are in control. Another thing that could happen is that Adobe decide to cancel Flash. Imagine what would happen then, if there were no tag.)

Answer 2

Pros:

1. You can easily use the tag and let it degrade to flash or other filetypes/codecs for backwards compatibility without using javascript.
   • Doesn't need a proprietary plug-in
   • Is platform-independent while flash is not (see nr. 2)
   • Using it will encourage other browser vendors to implement it (read as IE)
   • The tag has semantic meaning.
   • Comes built into the browser.
   • No vendor lockin

Cons:

1. It's a part of an unfinished standard.
   • A very small percentage of installed browsers support it <-- not an issue (See pro nr. 1)
   • Browser vendors have yet to agree on a standard codec <-- not an issue either, see link in nr. 1)

Answer 3

It's also an advantage the video-tag is native to html, so it integrates nicely. This sounds like a non-issue, but it's not. You can for example overlay the video with some HTML caption. And the HTML caption can use the same styles as other captions on the same page.

You also can apply some (future) CSS transitions to the video element: look at this demo.

Answer 4

Regarding this point:

"As for the semantics part - I understand that search engines might be able to detect videos better now, but... what will they do with them anyway? OK, so they know that there is a video in the page. And? They can't index a video! I'd like some more arguments here."

if optimized properly, a video will include a transcript, which a search engine can read, and correspondingly divulge all of the information about the video. I guess they can index the video's page? as for the value of it...i guess i won't have to watch crap I don't need, to find something I need, bcz I will know exactly what's in the video

Answer 5

1. Many Mobile Devices support today: iPhone, iPod Touch, Symbian S60, Android, etc

2. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera all support the tag (granted, you'll need to encode to 2 formats: H.264 and Ogg Theora. However, you can reuse the H.264 video with a Flash or Silverlight failsafe for older browsers and Internet Explorer

Answer 6

Imagine if there was no img tag. If you want images, you have to use a 3rd party plugin, that is really slow and has no standard way to embed it in a page. You can't easily copy images in this way, and search engines basically have no clue what if it's an image or a game or anything.

Without this, no images were available.

Then imagine that a browser was released that just let you use this fancy new img tag.

The video (and audio) tag are a logical sensible way for things to work. We shouldn't need a third party plugin to use a completely standard media format.