Best solution for embedding videos in webpages

Question

I am looking at ways to embed videos in webpages. My website is coded in HTML4 and currently the videos are displayed by embedding Flash (SWF) files. The SWF itself can be a single movie or a player that loads another FLV file.

Now the first problem we have is that that apparently these videos won't play on iPhones or iPads because it does not support flash. I am yet to verify this myself.

My alternative was to use YouTube but again the iPhones and iPads may not play the videos because embedding YouTube videos is same as embedding a SWF file. Even if I can get the YouTube videos to work this leas me to two other problems: YouTube branding and YouTube advertisements. If there is a workaround for the three problems then I can accept YouTube as a solution.

I am looking for a solution for embeding videos in my pages that does not have these problems and is known to work across browsers and devices. I plan to discard all SWF and FLV files and convert the videos into a genuine video format, MPEG4 perhaps but I need advice on that too.

Answer 1

I use iOS devices so I can confirm that Flash will not play on them. However, YouTube will automatically serve HTML5 video to devices that require it, so that should not be a problem. Branding will always be an issue, unless you roll your own solution.

You can check out the Sublime Video player, which seems to only show their branding for a short while after playback begins.