Web Development with jQuery®

Implementing h.264 Video Content

The h.264 video format has become the new de facto standard for digital video. It is used by YouTube,

Apple, and over-the-air HDTV providers. It is also one of the encoding standards for Blu-ray discs. In

this section, you learn how to convert and distribute your video content in this format.

Encoding Using Handbrake or QuickTime

The format of your video content depends on whether you obtain or generate the video content

(and from which device the content is generated). If you want to use the h.264 format and need to

convert from another video format, you need to obtain a video conversion utility. Recommended

utilities are Handbrake (https://handbrake.fr/) and QuickTime (https://www.apple.com/quick-

time/). Handbrake is explicitly recommended if you are not using a Mac. In addition, QuickTime

Player (v. 10+) on a Mac enables you to Export from the File menu, but Apple recently (since version

10.3) reduced the available functionality. Each tool contains device presets to produce the expected

video size and quality when targeting users on desktop computers and mobile devices of various

capabilities.

Using the HTML5

The HTML5 <video> element specifi cation allows for multiple <source> elements, as shown in the

previous section. In this manner, you can add an element for each of the three supported formats

(h.264, Ogg, and WebM) and be certain of content playback on all modern browsers.

Using the Flash Player Plugin

To avoid encoding your video content in multiple formats, you can instead add fallback markup to

specify that the MediaElement plugin should use Flash to play your h.264 video fi le:

<object width='320' height='240'

type='application/x-shockwave-flash'

data='flashmediaelement.swf'>

http://www.it-ebooks.info