Migrate to webm for video?

[thequbit]

So @Nolski mentioned that going to webm might be a solid choice for video format moving forward. I believe ffmpeg has no issue with this, so I don't believe there will be any technical challenges there.

I can only assume that Android and iOS support VP8 natively, but I need to do more research on that.

So, should we move from mp4 to web?

Should this compression /encoding happen on the client or the server?

Also, should we limit the length of the video?

[thequbit]

I vote for webm, and if possible, encoding and compressed on the device.

Also, I think a 3 minute limit seems good.

[Nolski]

Just FYI, Apple is the only company which doesn't support VP8. I know Safari doesn't support webm/vp8. On the other hand, Firefox doesn't support mp4.

[thequbit]

Herm. Dumb.

It appears to me that MediaVLCKit and/or MobileVLCKit would work for playing webm's on iOS: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html

I definitely though that twitter had moved to VP8, but it looks like they actually don't do anything with the video - they just serve it. So I think they support a variety of video types.

Right now we support four video types. Once uploaded, we convert to mp4, and reduce the resolution, frame rate, and bit rate. The output file format is mp4.

Note: on my phone and on my laptop ( Ubuntu ) I was able to play the mp4 in Firefox.

@dkd903 - can you chime in here to let us know if webm would work on iOS?

[Nolski]

I mean, you can always transcode it into mp4 and webm and serve the video file depending on the device. That's how I've seen most other people do it.

[thequbit]

That seems like a solution for a deployment that has enough money to pay for such things, ha. But yes, the thought crossed my mind. Thanks @Nolski .

[Nolski]

Just food for thought.
iOS webm decoder
https://github.com/motrr/RemoteControlGalileo

Also for playing webm on safari
https://github.com/brion/ogv.js

[thequbit]

👍 thanks @Nolski!