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YouTube: HTML5 "does not yet meet all of our needs"

There are those who believe that Adobe's Flash format is being handed its hat, especially since Steve Jobs has banished it from the iPhone and iPad platform. But according to YouTube, HTML5 is not yet ready to meet all of its needs.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

There are those who believe that Adobe's Flash format is being handed its hat, especially since Steve Jobs has banished it from the iPhone and iPad platform. But according to YouTube, HTML5 is not yet ready to meet all of its needs.

John Harding, software engineer at YouTube, highlights six areas where HTML5 is lacking compared to Flash. There are:

  • Standard Video Format - Not all browsers support H.264 because of licensing concerns, holding back HTML5.
  • Robust video streaming - There's more to video that just pointing to a file. People want control to be able to stream live video or go to a particular spot in a video.
  • Content Protection - DRM! No matter how you feel about it, some content providers love it.
  • Encapsulation + Embedding - There's a lot more to a YouTube videos than the video. There's stuff such as captions, annotations, and advertising.
  • Fullscreen Video - Still a pain for HTML5 to handle fullscreen video.
  • Camera and Microphone access - Some folks record their YouTube videos using YouTube, something that's not possible with HTML5.

Bottom line is that YouTube is, for now at least, dependant on the Adobe Flash platform for some elements of its business. This means that Flash isn't going to go away overnight, no matter how much Steve Jobs wants that to happen.

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