All posts tagged ‘video’

File Under: HTML5, Multimedia
Aug
20
2010

Mozilla’s Popcorn Project Adds Extra Flavor to Web Video

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Video on the web has always been a bit disappointing.

After all, it’s pretty much just like television, only smaller. And unlike the rest of the web, video is just as much a passive experience in your browser as it is anywhere else.

Mozilla would like to change that. Developers at the browser maker’s Drumbeat project — an initiative that advocates new open web technologies — have created Popcorn, a tool intended to make web video every bit as interactive as the rest of the web.

Popcorn is a very new effort and still a bit rough around the edges, but results are already impressive. Popcorn adds metadata to HTML5 native web video, annotating videos with information like location, details about the people and topics in the video, subtitles, and licensing details. The metadata can be used in real time to add to the experience.

For example, the subtitles attached to the video can be sent to an online translation tool and converted to whatever language you want on the fly. JavaScript handles the syncing. Also, the location data associated with a video can be plotted on a map, and the viewer can browse the map while the video plays.

The most-cited advantage of HTML5 is that it allows for videos to be played in the browser without the use of plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. But HTML5 affords another layer of utility — its native multimedia capabilities allow video and audio clips to be manipulated and enhanced by other things happening inside the browser. The look, size, position and controls of the video or audio file can be altered by JavaScript, CSS and Canvas animations. Playback can be enhanced with data pulled from the web’s many APIs. More than just a technology to side-step Flash, native video in HTML5 opens up a whole new set of interactive possibilities for video experiences on the web.

Check out Mozilla’s Popcorn demo page. You’ll see a number of widgets surrounding the main video. Popcorn.js pulls topics, places and people out of the video and plots the locations on a map and searches Wikipedia, Google News, Flickr and Twitter for more info on the people and topics in the video.

The result is what Mozilla developer Tristan Nitot calls “hypervideo.” What Nitot means is that Popcorn is connecting video to the rest of the web, linking it into the hypertext world.

If you’re not using a browser capable of running the demo, you can watch a video of the demo on the Drumbeat website.

As cool as this initial demo is, Popcorn is a long way from a finished product or even usable tool for anything beyond experimenting. Also, the demo shows off several widgets all at once, which makes the experience seem a little chaotic and crowded. But used as a spice, only where appropriate, Popcorn provides extra depth around videos, and the possibilities are thought-provoking.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
Aug
18
2010

Vimeo Spreads the HTML5 Love With Web-Native Video Player

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Video sharing site Vimeo has taken the HTML5 plunge one step further with a brand new “universal” embeddable player aimed at mobile devices like the iPhone or the iPad.

Vimeo’s new “Universal Player” is actually capable of serving several different kinds of video formats, but it uses a script to check the browser’s video capabilities. Depending on what the browser can handle, Vimeo may display an HTML5 player, a Flash player or a platform-native player. For users, the playback experience and user interface are the same, regardless of the player being used.

The new embed code, now the default throughout the whole Vimeo site, still serves Flash to desktop browsers, reserving the native options for iPad and iPhone users. But eventually, Vimeo plans to let desktop users in on the HTML5 fun — including perhaps serving WebM videos to Firefox, Chrome and Opera users.

So, if you’re reading this post on an iPad or an iPhone, this movie will launch in a native player wrapped inside the browser’s skin:

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

Interest in HTML5 video is reaching a fever pitch. It’s being fueled mostly by the iPad and other mobile browsing devices that can’t play Flash. Also, the recent launch of the new WebM video format, and the HTML5 video capabilities being built into the latest browser releases have publishers and video services exploring non-Flash alternatives for their viewers.

Vimeo’s new player builds on the HTML5 video player the company first launched as a beta project back in January. But the rapid growth of HTML5 video on the web has urged Vimeo to push this new player to the fore. Other video sites, most notably YouTube, have also launched their own site-wide non-Flash experiences in the last few months. But in most cases the only way to use the native web video players is to visit the actual website. Vimeo is the first to offer an embeddable native player by default.

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File Under: Databases, Other
Jul
23
2010

Big Data in the Deep Freeze: John Jacobsen of IceCube

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John Jacobsen works for the IceCube telescope project, the world’s largest neutrino detector, located at the South Pole. The project’s mission is to search for the radioactive sub-atomic particles that have been generated by violent astrophysical events: “exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars,” according to the project website.

Jacobsen is one of the people in charge of handling the massive amounts of data collected by IceCube. In the video, shot this week at the O’Reilly OSCON 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon, John explains how they collect a terabyte of raw data per hour, then send everything to IceCube’s remote research and backup facilities using a finicky satellite hook-up.

Antarctica is one of the least accommodating places on Earth to perform scientific research with computers. It’s the driest spot on the planet — atmospheric humidity hovers around zero — and bursts of static electricity threaten the integrity of IceCube’s data stores. The lack of humidity causes the server clusters’ cooling systems to break down. And if something fails, a spare might take six months to arrive.

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File Under: JavaScript
Jul
22
2010

Video: jQuery Gurus Talk About Mobile, the Future

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Here’s a short video about the future of jQuery, our favorite JavaScript library for creating rich, animated site interactions.

The interviewees are Mike Hostelter and Jonathan Stark, co-founders of appendTo, a consulting company that trains and supports jQuery programmers. The video was shot this week at O’Reilly OSCON 2010, taking place in Portland, Oregon through Friday.

In the interview, they talk a little bit about what’s next for the jQuery Core group — currently, jQuery creator John Resig is auditing mobile browsers to build more mobile features into jQuery, making it easier for JavaScript developers to make HTML5 iPad and smartphone web apps that are more “appy.” Also, there ultimately won’t be a separate pack for mobiles and desktops — the future of jQuery is one code library that works on all browsers and all devices.

See other OSCON 2010 videos on O’Reilly’s YouTube channel.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia
Jul
15
2010

More Cool HTML5/JavaScript Video Players

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One of the most-cited advancements in HTML5 the new syntax for embedding videos on web pages without the use of plugins.

Rather than load up a Silverlight or Flash player, you can just wrap a file URL in <video> tags and the video will play natively in the most recent crop of browsers — including Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPad, where Flash and Silverlight aren’t allowed.

The design of default controls are left up to the browser vendor, but they are usually rather spartan, so the user experience is a little lacking. But since native web playback is all done with web standards, you can create fancy players in JavaScript and CSS that wrap around your video and make playing, controlling and navigating video content much more elegant.

We’ve previously told you about some great standards-based players from Sublime Video, Kaltura and Video for Everybody. Here are a few more.

  • FlareVideo (screenshot at the top) is an HTML5 player that we especially like because it’s very easy to dip into the CSS and JavaScript and start customizing. It also ships with a couple of themes that mimic the look of Vimeo and Spotify and serve as a helpful springboard for further customization.

  • Video JS is another player based on some lightweight JavaScript. It’s fully skinnable, library independent, and it has a fallback scheme for IE.

  • The Open Standard Media (OSM) player uses the jQuery framework to fancy up your HTML5 videos. So if you’re the jQuery type, this one’s for you. You can also use it to play back videos published on Vimeo and YouTube in a playlist that sits next to the player.

    • [Via insicdesigns]

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