Ryan Lawler has a great post up on gigaom.com where he talks about the video codec wars. For those of you not in the know, there are multiple video formats on the web, not all of which work in all browsers. Confused? You will be.
For a long time now Flash video has been the most popular way to get your video content onto that lovely webpage you just created. It’s relatively easy to do (assuming you have the necessary software), and it works in just about all browsers… unless you have an iOS device. Yes, if you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch you simply can’t view Flash video. And that’s a problem. Years of Flash-based video content are inaccessible to those of us with shiny Apple devices.
So, what’s the solution? Unfortunately, there isn’t a single one. Apple uses H.264 in its Safari browser, as will Microsoft when IE9 rolls around. Firefox and Google Chrome use WebM. Publishers are not willing to encode their content twice, as storing all that content costs money. And so we have plug-ins. Browser vendors are creating plug-ins that will mean video content is viewable on all browsers, and while that is all well and good, wouldn’t a standard file-format for video on the web be the best way forward?
More versatile and more user-driven; that’s where the web is heading. The focus is no longer on the website, it’s on the users themselves. It’s not about what you’ve got to say, it’s all about what they want to know. And they don’t want to wait for it. They want it now and on whatever device they happen to be using – iPhones, iPads, you name it. What’s more, people expect websites to work perfectly on these devices. A few years ago, they didn’t. Now they do.
And it’s not only about written content – video rules. In 2009, YouTube racked up over 1 billion views per day. In 2010, that doubled to 2 billion, over 250 times the number it was getting six years ago. By 2013, Cisco believe 90% of web traffic will be video.
So what now for enterprise? The majority are following the consumer trend and gearing up to deliver video on the web in the shape of product demos and presentations. We’ll see more video, with higher production values and higher-bandwidth. There’ll be more interactivity too, with branching video content that gives users seamless access to the information they need.
That’s what is coming up. What’s your plan?
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