My concern is from that of a business. Encoding as OGG will only further questions from clients, rather than answering them. “So, this video you’re encoding… I can’t watch it on my Mac (safari)? And I still can’t see it on my iPhone?”

There’s the obvious “be damned with licenses” and encode as MP4 anyway, but then I have to encode twice, which is ok for the odd video, but could be a right arse long term, as that’s more cost to client, and as far as they’re concerned why not pay once for encoding to FLV?

From my (business) point of view, there is no point in chasing HTML5 for video. No matter how much I want to do the right thing…

I’ve only worked for quasi-public sector sites for whom profit isn’t an imperative, and I’ve been absorbed thinking about open-ness and standards, so hadn’t given Jake’s perspective much thought.

To me, the negatives are:

• Double encoding is time, extra process and more storage
• Flash “works” – change is expensive

The advantages to using open HTML5 video are

• It’s (ultimately) a better user experience, as user doesn’t have to worry about plugins (a major source of worry for non-techy users)
• It works on iPhones and (eventually) other mobile browsers
• As a web designer, you can do fancy stuff with CSS etc as it’s native in the browser (this may not matter to business; depends what they want to do with the video)
• The native video controls are keyboard accessible (in Opera; in Firefox, only when JavaScript is on; in Chrome and Safari, not at all)
• You can have a textual transcript, which can be scripted into synchronised video captions: great for “Search Engine Optimisation” and “DDA compliance”

Any one care to wade in with some business reasons for or against double-encoding and using HTML5 video?

If you’re British, it’s not “awesome”. That’s an American word, like “sidewalk”, “gas” for petrol, “critter”, “varmint”, “tarnation” and “gotten” as the third form of the verb. Americans, you’re welcome to use them; they’re your words, but they are not English.

If you want knee-jerk circle-jerk response to mediocre design, the term is “Brendan Dawesome“.

If you want to express actual approbation for something, the English terms are “spiffing”, “top-hole”, “wizard” or “ticketyboo”.

Thank you. Bye.

The discussion encompasses Konnie Huq, My Bloody Valentine…and no tech!

The HTML5 video element provides a fantastic way to embed video into web pages without relying on plugins, and it is now supported in Opera, Firefox and Chrome, so things are looking up. One burning question however is “how do we provide alternative content for users that either can’t see, or can’t hear the video?

In this article on the Opera Developer Network, I demo a proof-of-concept solution.

The physics and biology are simple. If you are taller than the optimal height, not enough gravity reaches the top of the brain. This means that the blood tends to collect there, and not enough goes through the lower parts of the brain such as the hippocampus which controls things like spatial navigation. This is why tall people are often gangly and bump into things.

People shorter than 5′6″ have the opposite problem. Their heads are closer to the centre of the earth (where the gravity particles are formed in the base of volcanoes) so the blood tends to collect at the bottom of the brain and not flow so much at the top. This makes them more likely to commit suicide or suffer from an engorged hippocampus (which also controls long-term memory, which is why very short people like Hitler, Napoleon and Stalin never forgot grudges, for example).

However, at 5′6″, the distribution of gravity in the brain is perfect for optimal blood-flow around all areas, leading to high intelligence, superior wit, peak physical ability and extraordinary virility. Scientific fact.

Co-incidentally, I am five feet and six inches tall.