Hi, I'm building a site where users can upload video clips. I want users with mobile devices such as Iphone and Android based smartphones to be able to use the site and watch the videos, but I know that phone and Android are a little picky when it comes to vidoe codecs/formats. I did some reading but I'm still a little confused so I would appreciate a little help here putting the pieces of puzzle in my brain in place So I know that Iphone and some versions of Android don't support Flash, So its best if by default the site uses HTML5 and fall back to a Flash player for non supporting browsers. And I know that Iphone can only play videos encoded in H264 codec with an mp4 or m4v format. My questions are: 1. Do I need two versions of each video? one H264/mp4/m4v for HTML5 to play if possible and another flv to be played for the Flash fallback option? 2. or Can I use Flash player to play mp4/m4v files too? Hope someone could at least point me in the right direction... thanks in advance
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–10.
Yes, you need two version of your website video. A good example for this is YouTube - YouTube.com uses Flash and youtube.com/html5 uses HTML 5 video player. YouTube brings out iframe for video embedding, which supports both Flash and HTML 5. Flash player can play H.264 codec MP4 but can't play M4V.
If i were you...wait a bit. Meantime... follow-up and study of mobile-technology, video-standards,....where is it all heading? Once you get a clearer view on it all....jump on the bandwagon. Also is it really worth?....Youtube is already heading that way....how can you beat this giant? It would be a shame, investing all this effort and ending up nowhere.
Instead of creating a new one, why not stick with the Youtube bandwagon and create a iPhone and Android community with video tutorials and how to maximize the use? This would make a great impact as not every one likes to create a video.