Stream video from website, and support modern browsers (incl. IE) *and* iPad

Question

My boss wants the following:

Requirements: Stream m4v videos from our Web-server to clients including standard web browsers (IE7, FF, Chrome, etc) and iPad!

I'm not really sure why he wants m4v...he mentioned efficiency but it may also have to do with iPad compatibility?? Anyway, I'm stuck with m4v.

I've browsed some related questions on SO, and this page is very useful as well:

http://henriksjokvist.net/archive/2009/2/using-the-html5-video-tag-with-a-flash-fallback

So if I understand correctly, HTML5 with <video> tag will take care of all my requirements (browsers & iPad) except IE up to and including IE8.

So in my code:

<div id="demo-video-flash">
   <video id="demo-video" poster="snapshot.jpg" controls>
    <source src="video.m4v" type="video/mp4" /> <!-- MPEG4 for Safari -->
    <source src="video.ogg" type="video/ogg" /> <!-- Ogg Theora for Firefox 3.1b2 -->
   </video>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function() { // ... a dash of jQuery.
    var v = document.createElement("video"); // Are we dealing with a browser that supports <video>? 
    if ( !v.play ) { // If no, use Flash.
      var params = {
        allowfullscreen: "true",
        allowscriptaccess: "always"
      };
      var flashvars = {
        file: "video.f4v",
        image: "snapshot.jpg"
      };
      swfobject.embedSWF("player.swf", "demo-video-flash", "480", "272", "9.0.0", "expressInstall.swf", flashvars, params);
    }
  });
</script>

As the link above explains, test if the browser supports <video>, and if not, fall back to flash. If the browser supports <video>, I don't need to worry about the player as the browser handles that. If it doesn't support <video>, I need to provide:

(a) A flash player.

(b) A flash-compatible copy of my .m4v video

Questions:

1) Will this solution work for my requirements?

2) Is .m4v a good format to stream to iPad? (I'm guessing yes as it's an Apple proprietary format!)

3) Is .m4v "flash-comatabile"? That is, if I send it to my flash player will it work? I've read conflicting reports on this. If it's not, then I guess I need to have a copy of my video converted to a flash-compatable format...any recommendations? (.f4v seems common but we already have a .mov file will that work?)

4) Last but not least, what's a good flash player. I'm leaning toward flowplayer (http://flowplayer.org/), however, we already have a swf player installed (http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/). Seems this latter one would work...any advantages to one or the other??

Apologies if some parts of this question don't make sense...there's alot of info about video out there and it's hard to piece it all together...hoping some answers here may help. I can refine my question as needed.

Thanks in advance!

Peter

Answer 1

As far as I know..., IE does not support HTML5 so the tag would be unrecognized in IE...