VLC plugin - Support for HTML5 video tag

[zseliz]

Hi!

The VLC media player supports a huge number of video codecs including proprietary codecs like H.264. HTML5 now provides a standardized way to embed audio and video files to the web pages. Unfortunately, at this time W3C doesn't specify any compulsory codec for the browsers which they should at least support.

This led to the current situation that some of the major web browsers support the proprietary H.264 (for example Safari) codec while the others (like Opera, Mozilla Firefox, etc.) support the royalty-free Theora codec.

In my opinion, the VLC media player should help to improve this situation. Now, the standard Windows installer containes a plugin for Mozilla Firefox and for Internet Explorer. It may help to embed videos into web pages, but in the current form it is not compatible with the HTML5 specification.

Would you mind to add support for the HTML5 video tag in the future?

I am looking forward to your opinion about this.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Patches are welcome.

[VLC_help]

I think this would require new browser API since this isn't about mime types or default embed objects.

[zseliz]

I think this would require new browser API since this isn't about mime types or default embed objects.

I am not really into the XUL language of Mozilla, I have just experimented with it a few months ago. According to the HTML5 specification, everything within the <video> tag is displayed only if the video itself cannot be displayed.

Maybe the plugin should modify the HTML DOM in a way like this:

1. Detect the HTML5 <video> element
2. Create an <embed> element within the <video> element with the correct attributes

In my opinion in this case a new API is not neccessary. The browser plays the video if it has native support for its codec and calls for the VLC player if not. The only problem may occure with the control elements.

But as I have mentioned it above I have never developed a complete plugin neither for Firefox, nor for IE. It would be really good to read the opinion of people who take part in the development of the plugin.

And another question: where can the source files for the browser plugins found? Are they bundled with the official tarball?

[VLC_help]

That way you would only support Firefox versions. I was thinking more like generic browser plugin, that would work with Opera, Safari etc. Your plan can be achieved quite easily with Greasemonkey script (there might already be one).

where can the source files for the browser plugins found? Are they bundled with the official tarball?

There are located in projects subfolder.
http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=tr ... ts;hb=HEAD

[bububu]

According to the HTML5 specification, everything within the <video> tag is displayed only if the video itself cannot be displayed.

Logically it should, but that's not what the spec says:

Content may be provided inside the video element. User agents should not show this content to the user; it is intended for older Web browsers which do not support video, so that legacy video plugins can be tried, or to show text to the users of these older browsers informing them of how to access the video contents.

So everything within the <video> element (except for <source>) is displayed only if the video element itself is not recognized by the browser. It's braindead, but that's how it is, thank Mr Hickson for that.

In Firefox, for a <video> that has only an H.264 source, a broken video player with an X sign is displayed instead of the fallback content. Opera just fails silently. If the controls attribute of the <video> tag is not set, neither the <video> nor the fallback content is rendered.

The HTML5 spec has example code for a Javascript fallback using the error event "if the author isn't sure if the user agents will all be able to render the media resources provided" (how should the author know?). The VLC plugin could do that. An alternative (short of hooking into each browser's video engine) would be to replace the <video> element before the renderer sees it.

It wouldn't make much sense to implement HTML5 video without the standardized Javascript API (controls, events/callbacks, download link) that comes with it. So it certainly won't be easy.

For Firefox, I found this addon that uses plugins to render <video>: System Video. Don't know if it works with VLC. They only mention Quicktime.

[napx]

With rumors that Google will be open-sourcing the VP8 codec and patents they acquired, I think the HTML5 video impasse will start to be resolved in 1-3 months with future browser versions and changes to websites. I wouldn't allocate resources to the HTML5 issue right now. Things will be much clearer this summer.

[VLC_help]

I wouldn't allocate resources to the HTML5 issue right now. Things will be much clearer this summer.

I hope so.

[napx]

Here goes: http://www.webmproject.org/
Google just gave us the VP8 codec open-sourced and free-licensed. They chose to pair it with ogg vorbis for audio and put it in a restricted version of matroska container they are calling "webm".

The quality at the moment looks like somewhere between xvid and h.264, significantly better than Theora.

Barring any patent lawsuit meltdowns, we will see browsers supporting this new codec through html5 and software players picking up support very soon. Think next major version of your favorite softwares. There are already firefox and chromium builds supporting it, as well as ffmpeg patches. That's one more piece of work for VLC

Next, we will also begin to see this format supported in hardware and devices.

Overall pretty sweet if you ask me.

[VLC_help]

Preliminary support for VP8 and webm has been added to nightlies.

[napx]

awesome

[Lotesdelere]

Preliminary support for VP8 and webm has been added to nightlies.

For testing purposes a pre-RC build with WebM support can be found on this page.

[pdfan]

is it possible to test webm vlc on gentoo?

[VLC_help]

If you build nightlies from sources, it should be possible.

[pdfan]

using gentoo package vlc-1.0.9999 ( git://git.videolan.org/vlc/vlc-1.0.git), how to test webm?

[pdfan]

# ffmpeg -v 8 -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0 -vcodec libvpx_vp8 -vb 768k -f alsa -ac 2 -i hw:0,0 -acodec vorbis -ab 64k -f webm out.webm
# ffplay out.webm
work now,

# vlc out.webm
not work.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Because your VLC isn't compile with VP8, obviously

[pdfan]

how to enable webm in gentoo vlc-1.0.9999 ? if there's not ebuild, how to try webm from sources configure/make?

[pdfan]

is it posible to live stream webm to HTML5 video tag using vlc? like the one claimed the first free software live streaming solution to have VP8 in WebM streaming live to browsers : http://zaheer.merali.org/articles/2010/ ... flumotion/

[VLC_help]

is it posible to live stream webm to HTML5 video tag using vlc?

In theory yes.