5 ms·

Introducing Wikipedia’s new HTML5 video player

58 points by TopTrix 14y ago

rorrr 14y ago
The camel video barely plays in Chrome 23, froze my Firefox 16.0.2
- padenot 14y ago
  (I'm a Firefox developer that happens to work on HTML5 audio and video). I can reproduce your problem on Firefox 16.0.2 , and this is fixed, at least on our Nightly builds, perhaps before that. But it is certainly embarrassing and should not happen (and was not caught during our extensive testing and beta phases), I'll look into back porting the relevant patches. Again, sorry about that.
  - rorrr 14y ago
    Nothing to be sorry about, you guys are doing a great job. Bugs happen, bugs get fixed.
  - TopTrix 14y ago
    You are great guys. I would have never used internet if I didn't get Firefox.
- angry-hacker 14y ago
  Same here, the video just get stuck.. the whole video html element freezes...
- loevborg 14y ago
  Works here (Chrome 23 on Ubuntu).
  - Andrex 14y ago
    Same, buttery smooth on Chrome 23+Ubuntu.
- nosecreek 14y ago
  Same here. Chrome 22 on Windows 7.
tvdw 14y ago
Happy to see that a big site is finally starting to support WebM. I hope that they've chosen to not support h264, because of its proprietary nature?
- TopTrix 14y ago
  As the post say, previously they were using Ogg player and now a complete open source player.
- thoughtsimple 14y ago
  Does anyone support anything but H.264 on mobile hardware yet?
loevborg 14y ago
I liked this example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Feeling.ogv http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Feeling.ogv. It also showcases the subtitles feature of the player. It didn't play the first time I tried it (current stable Chrome on Ubuntu) but reloading helped.
jkn 14y ago
Looks like Wikipedia is on track to become a big server of HTML5 WebM videos. The absence of H.264 support (assuming they hold on to that) might finally push Microsoft and Apple to support WebM out of the box. Maybe we will also see more hardware support for WebM in mobile devices...
- happypeter 14y ago
  Yes, and this is really exciting news. Soon one day, publishing a video is as easy as publishing a img, the world will be then a more open and free place.
- bitcartel 14y ago
  Plus lots of HTML 5 video players out there. Things are looking good. http://praegnanz.de/html5video/ http://praegnanz.de/html5video/
zanny 14y ago
Does anyone have some benchmarks on file size / video quality between ogv and webm?
copypasteweb 14y ago
So, nobody cares about more widely adopted <object/> which was supposed to be a solution for future media types and just happens to usually be more stable, have better perfomance and support much more media formats without having to invent new elements for each media type. Not even as a fallback.
manishsharan 14y ago
I would be interested in knowing the financials behind this. Video is expensive to serve and store: these costs become more noticeable if they get a lot of growth of Video uploads.As much as I love HTML5 Video , it drives up your storage and transcoding costs by two to three times if decide to support WEBM, OGG and MP4(though I see they are not doing MP4). If they are transcoding the video ,then that would add to CPU costs. Of course, I am basing my assumptions of AWS, Zencoder etc. I would love to hear how to plan to contain costs.
- xvolter 14y ago
  Wikipedia currently holds a huge amount of storage and data, while it will be a lot of work for them to support videos, I assume they thought of the costs before hand. Also, the true cost of videos isn't storing them in two formats, it's the various qualities, such as if I upload a 1080p and it gets converted to 480, 720, and 1080 for streaming.
  - manishsharan 14y ago
    I totally agree: the costs are number of formats supported times number of streaming resolutions supported. One video could potentially eat up 1 Gb of storage , if we add up all the formats- resolutions combination. (I am assuming that they will have multiple copies of the same video in different qualities. ) Plus transcoding and costs. A comparative text article might be stored and served at a fraction of the video costs. I am sure Wikipedia has some of the brightest minds and they have thought about these numbers. I want to know what their analysis is for my own edification.
    - xvolter 14y ago
      That makes sense, it would be nice to see what they're planning - how they plan - to support the new videos that will be sure to come. I wouldn't expect anything about it for awhile though, it's new, they're still learning, and they may change their approach early on.

58 points by TopTrix 14y ago

rorrr 14y ago

The camel video barely plays in Chrome 23, froze my Firefox 16.0.2

padenot 14y ago
(I'm a Firefox developer that happens to work on HTML5 audio and video). I can reproduce your problem on Firefox 16.0.2 , and this is fixed, at least on our Nightly builds, perhaps before that. But it is certainly embarrassing and should not happen (and was not caught during our extensive testing and beta phases), I'll look into back porting the relevant patches. Again, sorry about that.
- rorrr 14y ago
  Nothing to be sorry about, you guys are doing a great job. Bugs happen, bugs get fixed.
- TopTrix 14y ago
  You are great guys. I would have never used internet if I didn't get Firefox.
angry-hacker 14y ago
Same here, the video just get stuck.. the whole video html element freezes...
loevborg 14y ago
Works here (Chrome 23 on Ubuntu).
- Andrex 14y ago
  Same, buttery smooth on Chrome 23+Ubuntu.
nosecreek 14y ago
Same here. Chrome 22 on Windows 7.

tvdw 14y ago

Happy to see that a big site is finally starting to support WebM. I hope that they've chosen to not support h264, because of its proprietary nature?

TopTrix 14y ago
As the post say, previously they were using Ogg player and now a complete open source player.
thoughtsimple 14y ago
Does anyone support anything but H.264 on mobile hardware yet?

loevborg 14y ago

I liked this example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Feeling.ogv http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Feeling.ogv. It also showcases the subtitles feature of the player. It didn't play the first time I tried it (current stable Chrome on Ubuntu) but reloading helped.

jkn 14y ago

Looks like Wikipedia is on track to become a big server of HTML5 WebM videos. The absence of H.264 support (assuming they hold on to that) might finally push Microsoft and Apple to support WebM out of the box. Maybe we will also see more hardware support for WebM in mobile devices...

happypeter 14y ago
Yes, and this is really exciting news. Soon one day, publishing a video is as easy as publishing a img, the world will be then a more open and free place.
bitcartel 14y ago
Plus lots of HTML 5 video players out there. Things are looking good. http://praegnanz.de/html5video/ http://praegnanz.de/html5video/

zanny 14y ago

Does anyone have some benchmarks on file size / video quality between ogv and webm?

copypasteweb 14y ago

So, nobody cares about more widely adopted <object/> which was supposed to be a solution for future media types and just happens to usually be more stable, have better perfomance and support much more media formats without having to invent new elements for each media type. Not even as a fallback.

manishsharan 14y ago

I would be interested in knowing the financials behind this. Video is expensive to serve and store: these costs become more noticeable if they get a lot of growth of Video uploads.As much as I love HTML5 Video , it drives up your storage and transcoding costs by two to three times if decide to support WEBM, OGG and MP4(though I see they are not doing MP4). If they are transcoding the video ,then that would add to CPU costs. Of course, I am basing my assumptions of AWS, Zencoder etc. I would love to hear how to plan to contain costs.

xvolter 14y ago
Wikipedia currently holds a huge amount of storage and data, while it will be a lot of work for them to support videos, I assume they thought of the costs before hand. Also, the true cost of videos isn't storing them in two formats, it's the various qualities, such as if I upload a 1080p and it gets converted to 480, 720, and 1080 for streaming.
- manishsharan 14y ago
  I totally agree: the costs are number of formats supported times number of streaming resolutions supported. One video could potentially eat up 1 Gb of storage , if we add up all the formats- resolutions combination. (I am assuming that they will have multiple copies of the same video in different qualities. ) Plus transcoding and costs. A comparative text article might be stored and served at a fraction of the video costs. I am sure Wikipedia has some of the brightest minds and they have thought about these numbers. I want to know what their analysis is for my own edification.
  - xvolter 14y ago
    That makes sense, it would be nice to see what they're planning - how they plan - to support the new videos that will be sure to come. I wouldn't expect anything about it for awhile though, it's new, they're still learning, and they may change their approach early on.