What is the reality of video formats supported by (LMS+Browser+Hardware) ?

What is the reality of video formats supported by (LMS+Browser+Hardware) ?

by vouty - -
Number of replies: 2

Hi,
After reading HTML5 players documentation and Android recommendations, I decided to make a simple tool for comparing video formats supported  by browsers and Moodle on laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

When I use that simple test tool on laptops with different browsers , it's wonderfull  to see how many video formats are supported .
When I use it on tablets … it's different .

test

My concern is "tablets" (30% of my customers would be using tablets) and I was planing to use the WebM video format in Moodle (WebM : Vp8 + Vorbis, I love  it); today, after testing tablets, I'm not sure if  to choose "WebM" is appropriated choice, may be It'd be a better decision to use Mp4 during next year ....

What is your opinion ? What is your reality ?
Thank you very much

==  The tool I use : (any suggestion or remark would be welcome)  ===
http://siizit.com   (Guest)
Click on:  New : video formats supported by LMS and Browsers and Type password: Video2013% (1st letter is Upper case)
(Don't click on LOGIN)
__________________________________________________ _______________________
Moodle 2.4.5+ (Build: 20130905) __ (Digital Ocean / 512MB Memory / 1 Core / 20GB SSD Disk / 1TB Transfer)

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In reply to vouty -

Re: What is the reality of video formats supported by (LMS+Browser+Hardware) ?

by Jonas Nockert -

Vouty, for some reason I couldn't login with the given password.

I find http://html5test.com/results/tablet.html (also click on desktop and mobile in the menu) a good resource for finding actual support in browsers. Another one is http://caniuse.com/webm, http://caniuse.com/mpeg4 but it doesn't always give the whole picture as in some cases it shows browser support when in reality, it's supported by the browser in Windows but not, say, OS X and Linux.

There have just been a discussion in another thread here on the state of video for Moodle and the web. The answer depends on where you're coming from so I don't want to try to recap it here.

Personally, If I would do something with video today and want it to work on as many devices as possible, I would go with webm/vp8, mp4/h.264 and ogv/ogg/theora in parallell (the mp4 also used in the flash fallback). Just because it covers the most ground. However, this option can obviously be too time consuming and/or provide a hurdle for educators.

Stepping down a little in terms of coverage is serving h.264 and webm + flash fallback.

Next step down is to serve only mp4/h.264 with a flash fallback. Note that this still covers a lot of ground but misses some of the edge cases (newest Firefox on OS X being one example, unless flash has been installed).

 

When our organization started with video, I ended up creating a video plugin for Moodle that might be useful for you too. It uses http://videojs.com as a player and allows uploading of videos in one or more formats, captions and poster image: https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_videofile

Best regards,

   Jonas Nockert

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In reply to Jonas Nockert

Re: What is the reality of video formats supported by (LMS+Browser+Hardware) ?

by vouty - -

Hi Jonas,

I'm my "organization" and a beginner ... and sorry about my english

So, first of all, thank you for your answer which help me to confirm my opinion on video formats. I agree with the classification of video formats and  the integration of these formats on browsers (rank). However,  I noticed that LMS+Browsers doesn't work same way on android tablets. It seems that specific versions of browser exists for tablets (.. waiting for routines in hardware to manage video formats ?). So  the rank is my first step and after I'd like to test functional solution (LMS+browser) on Android tablet; I'd like to avoid parallel video formats for compatibility ...Another question is :  what is the integration of video formats on outsiders ? (Android browsers)

The other problem I met is encoding the files. For example, I used a well known free software for encoding a video to WebM and OGG formats. Everything was perfect except that I can read the WebM file on two browsers (+LMS)  but not on the third one (which has a good reputation in supporting the HTML5 video formats). I thought I solved the choice of converters 2 weeks ago but today, I'm not sure. May be I missed something.

I think I still have a lot to learn and thank you for your proposition for the plugin but I'm  using Moodle 2.4.5 and not ready to go with Moodle 2.5.

A beginner trying to understand the game and who appreciated your help.
Vouty

Nota : Following that post, I simplified my test (3 video formats for testing solutions  LMS+Browsers+Devices)
(Video formats : MP4, WebM , and OGV )
siizit.com / Going faster : Test of 3 video formats (maximum coverage)
password : Video2013%  (click on course not on LOGIN)

quick_test

 

 

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