Experimenting with HTML5 and WebM Video Format
Interesting! I read an article in Streaming Media magazine about methods of transcoding video to WebM format. Two seemed interesting, both free, one was Miro’s Video Converter:
https://www.mirovideoconverter.com/
The other was nice in that besides being free, it also allowed a lot more granular control of the transcoding process. It is a Firefox Plug-in called “FireFogg“:
It requires Firefox 3.5 or later. I tried it on my last Netcast video file, and the results were pretty impressive, here’s the HTML5 code used to stream it once the file was transcoded to WebM format:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<body>
<center>
<video controls width=”640″ height=”420″>
<source src=”DrBillTV021911V-176.webm”>
Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>
</center>
</body>
</html>
View it at this link: Dr. Bill.TV Netcast #176
Also, try this… “click” along the timeline that appears as you “float” your mouse over it. Notice that you can “jump around” in the streamed video timeline to “pick up” anywhere along the timeline. Pretty nice! There are “high end” video streaming software that allows this, but this is VERY simple and totally free!
Pretty cool! Of course, you’ll have to use either Firefox or Chrome, or another browser that supports HTML5 to view it. For now, IE is right out! However, this may, indeed, be the future of webcasting! It sure is simple!
It was a fun Geek Project! Try it yourself if you have a need to!