Encoding.com Now Offering Expanded Codec Support for HTML5

HTML5 is gaining further momentum today as leading cloud encoding provider Encoding.com is now supporting the WebM and Ogg Theora video codecs, adding to its longstanding support for H.264. As a result, customers can now choose "presets" for these codecs so that all browsers and devices supporting HTML5 will be able to seamlessly playback video.

Encoding.com's president Jeff Malkin told me that he's seen a "spike" in customers asking for the feature as their interest in HTML5 has grown. Jeff interprets this as being pushed by 2 factors: end users who are increasingly watching video on mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad (which of course don't support Flash) and end users' increasing desire to watch video online without the need for a video plug-in such as Flash. The latter requires content providers to publish HTML5 video across all browsers since there is no current codec standard.

Jeff doesn't see this situation resolving itself any time soon, so for content providers looking to deploy across all mobile devices and in browsers that support HTML, multiple encodes will be necessary.

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Categories: Devices, Encoding

Topics: Encoding.com, HTML5