Interactive video: Why the video tag won't cut it

As we approach the Olympics we're seeing a lot of different experiences being created around video content. I was recently quoted in a Denver Post article about Silverlight being used as part of the Democratic National Convention and when looking at the Aurora project (Techmeme discussion)I thought it would be a good time to break out a "why the < href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/html5_video.asp">video tag is inadequate" post. It won't be enough because we're finally reaching a point where video is just a content type and not the entire experience.

There's only minor value in standalone video content. Sure, YouTube is popular (and even YouTube has started enabling related videos right inside of the player) but "video in a square" is going to get less and less useful as the web involves. What's going to be important is how people incorporate video into the overall experience. Video adds that extra real time/real life element. But being able to bring in related content and add that to the video experience is what really makes using video great. We can have that very human interaction and feel with video but then drill down into data as our video is intermingled with text, charts, and numbers.

Watching video of the Olympics is great, but that's not any different from television. Watching video of the Olympics, being able to instantly get information about medal standings and athletes right inside of the same application without having to open up a new tab and search is the kind of interactive experience that the web should be all about. The video tag just treats video as another box on the page like a div tag or an image. That's going to be good up to a point, but as we move around video standards and the web becomes more distributed people are going to consume the exact same video clip in different ways (desktop apps, the browser, mobile devices, offline) so the content and the format become a commodity. To really stand out and draw people into your video application you'll have to start providing that interactive content.

That's a core part of the RIA experience and it should be a core part of the web video experience. If this summer is any indication we're moving in that direction and I don't think the video tag will be able to keep up.