Version 3.1 Update
January 30, 2012Released version 3.1 with a few new features and bug fixes.
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Video.js Version 3.0!
January 10, 2012After months and months of work we're happy to announce Video.js version 3.0.
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Lynda.com HTML5 Video Tutorial Released
June 17, 2011I recently filmed a series of HTML5 video tutorials for Lynda.com, a really great service for online training. It was a great experience, and the videos are now available for viewing. You can get a 7-day free trial here and check them out. Let me know if they're helpful at all.
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How are you using video.js?
June 7, 2011I'd love to hear where and how people are using video.js. If you're using it somewhere, leave a note/link in the comments.
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New MPEG LA WebM/VP8 Patent Pool
February 11, 2011One of the things that browser and device vendors stand behind when deciding to support MP4/h.264 over Google's Webm video format and VP8 codec, is that while VP8 is open source, it may still be encumbered by patents. So far none of these submarine patents have surfaced, but now MPEG LA has put out a call, and hopes to form a patent pool that would create a license for VP8, and essentially put a price on it.
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Apple adds AirPlay to Mobile Safari
January 28, 2011AirPlay is a video feature on iOS devices that lets you play video from your device on your TV, by streaming it to an Apple TV on the same wireless network. Before now this was only available in the iPod and YouTube apps, but with iOS 4.3 (now in beta) it will be available through Mobile Safari as well.
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Google is dropping h.264 from Chrome
January 11, 2011Google has decided to support the open source community by dropping h.264 support from Chrome. Previously Chrome was the only browser that could play all 3 major HTML5 formats—MP4/h.264, WebM/VP8, and Ogg/Theora.
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Over 50% of web users now support HTML5 Video
January 7, 2011As we roll into 2011, HTML5 video hits a major milestone. 50.5% of web users now support HTML5 video playback. This number was gathered by comparing browser versions that support HTML5 video with StatCounter's world-wide browser version statistics.
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HTML5 Video + Google Maps Mashup
December 16, 2010Mozilla has a cool demo of playing a video while drawing a line on a Google map similar to what you'd see in an Indiana Jones film. Check out the original post and the demo.
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2.0.2 Release - Subtitle Optimization + Safari on Leopard FS Fix
December 10, 2010Smallish update with some fixes and optimizations. Rewrote the subtitles parser so it's a lot more optimized and fixes a subtitle display bug. Put in a check for Safari running on Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard), which doesn't like native fullscreen for some reason. Triggering full window mode instead.
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2.0.0 Release – Behaviors, fallback APIs, and more.
November 22, 2010Big update. The biggest change for current users is a move back to using DIVs for control bar elements instead of unordered lists. There were a lot of conflicting styles issues when using lists, which shouldn't be an issue with divs. So if you upgrade, don't forget to upgrade your stylesheets as well.
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Make sites serve you HTML5 video in Safari
November 19, 2010John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a cool post on tricking websites to display HTML5 video when they say they can only play Flash. Many sites will tell you they require Flash, even when they actually support HTML5 video for iOS devices.
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1.1.5 Release - Subtitles using track, Android fix & more
November 9, 2010I've switched the subtitles to use the new track element defined in the HTML5 spec. You can now add subtitles by creating a track element pointing to your WebSRT subtitles source.
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Version 1.1.4 Release - CSS Loading Spinner & More
November 6, 2010The most notable update in this version is a loading indicator (spinner), for when the video is buffering or seeking. The spinner works pretty well, however it's limited by how accurately each browser tells us what it's currently doing through triggered events. The spinner works best in Firefox so far. Safari/Chrome are less consistent with what events are triggered and when. For this reason I'm using a more careful approach that makes sure the spinner gets hidden, as opposed to making sure the spinner always shows when the player is busy. There's a few bugs I had to account for too, like when Safari throws a "waiting" event, but then no other event to let us know it's not waiting anymore.
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Version 1.1.3 Release
October 19, 2010Probably the most notable change is a switch to using a big play button before the movie plays for the first time, as opposed to showing the control bar. The main reason for doing this is actually a bug in Safari. If you try to call any functions on the video other than play, before the video has loaded, Safari will error out. Some people mentioned that fullscreen mode did not work in Safari for them, and this is most likely what was happening for them. This would only happen if you were not preloading the video. You can still go back to showing the controls first through the showControlsAtStart option, but it's not recommended.
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Facebook Adds HTML5 Video
October 12, 2010Among other new HTML5 features, Facebook has an HTML5 video player for playback on the iPhone and iPad. They say that on other mobile browsers, Flash outperformed the HTML5 implementation. That's a little discouraging to hear, but HTML5 video is still young.
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iPad & iPhone Video Poster Fix (bonus Javascript Placement Fix)
September 20, 2010If you include the poster attribute on the video tag when you're using <source> tags, the video won't work on iPads & iPhones using iOS 3. You'll see a broken play button, or no play button at all. On the iPad specifically, playback in inconsistent. Sometimes it'll work and sometimes it won't. This is documented on the Video for Everybody site.
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VideoJS is IE9 Compatible
September 15, 2010After an initial test, VideoJS works with the new Internet Explorer 9 preview. Great news, and a little surprising considering the CSS layout of the controls, and the general nature of IE. Other VideoJS site layout stuff seems to break, but for now as long as the player works I'm happy.
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New VideoJS Site (Now with more HTML5)!
September 15, 2010I told myself when the site reached 100,000 visits I would redesign it. Well that number's come and gone, so here it is.
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