2010-02-22

IE <video> tag - Take Two

Recently I have released a new version of Xiph.Org Ogg Codecs (grab it from here), this new version includes a few Theora and FLAC bugfixes, better Windows 7 support and a Technical Preview of the <video> tag for Internet Explorer.

By Technical Preview I mean only basic playback, no seeking, no controls, no HTML5 interfaces.

I have made a screen cast showing this feature:



To enable <video> tag for Internet Explorer you need to add xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/video" attribute.

Edit: It works only when Internet Explorer is in Quirks mode

Mozilla's Bug 435339 - DirectShow backend for HTML5 video element - has helped me a lot, to say the least (thank you Chris Pearce).

The webpage used in screencast is: http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/demos/bigbuckbunny-videoonly.html with the xmlns attribute for <video>. Note that I have copied the webpage and the movie on my webserver, that page does not have the xmlns attribute.

Hope it works for you as it did for me in the screen cast above :)
Download the 32bit version installer from here (1,09Mb).

Edit: In order to use the <video> tag on Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0 please read my first IE <video> tag blog entry.

I have found out that there is an incompatibility between Windows XP and VMware while using the DirectShow Video Mixing Renderer 7 filter.

11 comments:

Ivo said...

This is a huge leap, Cristian! You are awesome.

Gregory Maxwell said...

It's worth mentioning, since the video doesn't show it, that the security dialog in IE only shows the first time.

Anonymous said...

This looks promising. You mention a xmlns attribute, but I don't see it in the HTML source using Firefox. Are you using server-side browser sniffing to output if for IE only?

Additionally, you're not using any Doctype. Does it change anything to use a Doctype? If not, i suggest using a HTML5 doctype for avoiding Quirks mode. Even if you're not doing anything CSS-y or any scripting, example pages without a doctype are a poor example for children. ;)

Anonymous said...

amazing, many thanks for your work

Paul Irish said...

Works in IE8/xp but not ie7 or 6. (though it seems to be buffering for ~20 seconds before play)
http://paulirish.com/i/2180.png

Right now only working when I hotlink the .ogv hosted here, but not with a locally hosted file.

Florent, it appears to not work with either an HTML5 or XHTML1 doctype. It seems quirks mode is required?

Very cool, regardless!

Cristian said...

Florent, thank you for your comment. I am by no means a webdeveloper, next time I'll try to do better :)

Paul, IE6 and IE7 do not have this xml namespace feature, they use a different syntax for Binary Element Behavior elements, see my first IE tag blog post for more information: http://cristianadam.blogspot.com/2010/01/ie-tag.html

Local files are not working because I considered only the links that start with http:// and ftp:// to be absolute links. This could be easily fixed but then Internet Explorer would display more security popups.

Martin Rauscher said...

The 64Bit version doesn't seem to work :(

IE asked to to allow the plugin, but it still says my browser can't display

Unknown said...

take a look at google chrome-frame a bit better

Unknown said...

Dear Christian,

after 2 hours of trial and error (and not having the brains so it seems) to get a video tag working in IE, thought I'd try to contact you directly.

the original code that works just fine in Chrome:




won't work in a shape or form in IE after using the mentionend hints & tips...

Could it perhaps be that some parts of the suggested html code should be put in my index file instead of in the subpage itself?

your kind attention would be hugely appreciated!

best regards,

maurice

Cristian said...

Dear Maurice,

Please use the e-Mail address from the Contact from the top of the blog to have a discussion per e-Mail.

Please don't forget to mention:
- OpenCodecs version
- IE Version / Windows Version
- Media type you tried to use (Theora vs WebM)

Teresa Jenkins said...

Hi, I am commenting to ask for help... I am trying to use some apps on a website that requires HTML 5, but I do not want to switch from IE 8. I know next to nothing about programming, my knowledge is more of the online variety- so most of the things said in the comments are like Greek to me... I have tried searching how to make IE 8 able to play HTML 5, but I really am not sure what I am looking for and I don't want to screw up my laptop messing around w/out knowing what the heck I am doing. Can you help me? I would appreciate it very much. Thanks.