I am trying to make a site available offline in a web browser (specifically: Mobile Safari and/or Google Chrome), using a manifest file to load the offline content into the application cache.
This works just fine for images, html content and even font files. But not so for the videos I am trying to store. Mobile Safari is asking to increase storage to 50MB (just as it should) to accomodate the videos, but when going offline the videos are not displayed. All in all the cached content amounts to 37MB.
I am using JWPlayer to show the videos (setting the HTML5 player version as the preferred player), but I have also tried the HTML5 video tag on its own to no avail. The JWPlayer is returning the "Could not load video file" message, just as if the URL was invalid, when going offline (but they work fine online). The videos are H264 encoded in MP4 containers.
Is Mobile Safari on iPad at all capable of storing and retrieving MP4 (or other video) files? Is there any special trick that needs to be employed?
The problem is that Safari itself doesn't play the videos. They're played by the QuickTime plugin, which ignores the browser's caches. See this article.
I don't know of any workaround (other than PhoneGap etc.), but I would certainly love to have one!
You could not use the JWplayer in offline (at least with your current version). In their script (swf), it is fetching some external script from their server (include their logo) such as
http://p.jwpcdn.com/ ... /jwpsrv_frq.js
http://p.jwpcdn.com/...../jwpsrv.js
http://p.jwpcdn.com/...../logo.png (JwPlayer text)
I think it's all about their authorization and license checking. It would take you an amount to get away that logo for the paid version, they may ask your domain and they will add it into their list of the customer's valid website domain, and they also give you a script in the static link and you can add it into your cache file.
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We are building a content delivery system, where users can upload videos and view (playback) the uploaded videos on their browser.
We need to provide offline support on viewing side. The videos files should get downloaded to the local storage and the HTML5 video tag should point to the downloaded video.
Has any one tried this before, Is this possible? what are the major challenges? any inputs on this is really appreciated.
I am planning to build a JavaScript/HTML5 app, and wrap it with phonegap to be installed on an android tablet.
In it, I want to show a video file.
Is it just a matter of creating an index.html file, and putting a mymov.ogv file in the same directory, and then using:
<video src="mymov.ogv"...>
and it will work on Android?
I have read about some problems with this, but my quest got me confused.
What are the caveats, if any?
PS: the video should be packaged within phonegap, such that the video is shown when the app is not connected to wifi. So it's a local file.
PPS: Since it's for internal use, I am able to choose a particular modern android version (if that makes any difference). There is no need to support old android versions whatsoever.
According to this resource: http://caniuse.com/ogv There is not support for ogv format in Android. Remember that Phonegap applications are just display in a rapped browser window-- So if the browser doesn't support it, you can't use it. Whether the video is on-board the device or streamed, doesn't matter.
You can certainly embed with the tag, but you might want to use the associated Javascript API to provide some control over the video.
I'm not sure why I thought the file should be handled by the browser (chrome in my case) and then do something (for chrome I think its use QuickTime to play) but instead I just get an untitled browser title, and the page doesn't actually load, as if its loading an empty html page
anyway the address is:
www.motionvideos.tv/video/1022_market_review_february_2012_taylors.mp4
Other details which may effect it:
The site uses WordPress, which is currently not functioning, due to someone's fiddling, and will be down for a day or so (stupid zeus server redirects)
The video is just under 9MB.
Possible causes?
This link is for video download.
Do you want it to show on page?
If so you need to open a HTML page to embed this in.
This is how you embed it via code:
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/format/mpeg4/streaming/example.html
For WP you`ll need to open up a post and use a dedicated plugin for embedding.
Also, you should know that :
MP4 is not a universally common codec - some users (many?) will not be able to view it
The file itself will load directly from the server, thus noticeably effecting total bandwidth usage (can reflect on site speed, hosting costs and etc)
Also not all hosters support (by default) media hosting. This got a lot to do with above mentioned bandwidth issue.
I would suggest re-coding to more common codec + using 3-rd party provider
(I.E. Flash + Youtube for one is a popular choice but you can also go with AVI + Media Hosting Provider X)
Hope this helps.
I have a jQuery Mobile website I created for a friend/client of mine. It only has 6 pages or so (2 of them are dialog windows). The site has HTML5 video with fallback for flash support via the videojs library. All videos are encoded properly in mp4, ogv (theora), and webm and so far play on every device I have used.
My problem lies bandwidth, the purpose of the program really needs to be an application because these are informational videos that may need to be viewed at any time, even with no web access (web access is required for first login to verify credentials).
I was left with 3 solutions, try writing native apps for all the platforms myself in their native languages, use Sencha Touch (which I am comfortable enough with extJS to do), or taking my existing jquery mobile app that is 100% functional including log-in and some backend package management to assign users a package of videos (there are multiple packages each with between 8-20 videos), and follow the jQuery Mobile tutorial for getting your app ready for PhoneGap, I believe its only enabling two settings, and both are to enable "cross-domain" requests, since my current web app would be running as localhost, it would see the scripts as external pages.
My main question/problem is for one, I have never used PhoneGap; aside from their Hello World android tutorial, and I know there are other all-in-one frameworks out there now: PhoneGap, Titanium, Corona, Adobe Flex (which I am installing while writing this tutorial, to see what it has to offer. If it has features like encoding videos automatically for the target device (video resolution changing), or even has local video playback features at all that may work.
Does anyone know which of the current frameworks have the ability to install a set of videos to the sdcard, (totaling around 6mb per install), and play them natively (by that i mean, in the devices native player, not inline inside of a webview). Which on android phones anyways, my current videojs based player plays the files natively in everything I have tried it on.
I just need a push in the right direction, if there is a PhoneGap plugin that I don't know about that allows videos to be played from the sd card, that would be terrific. Although I am not very happy with the speed of the android and blackberry webview controls. So something that uses 100% native controls would be great. I hope you guys can come up with some ideas, you can see the current app in action at m.yourvideobenefits.com email:abc#tool.com password: demo
You should view it from your phone if you want to see it properly, but if you do not have a smart phone; keep in mind that when viewing this page certain desktop browsers, the videos become their actual size after they are through loading. This is because i have autoload="true" in the video tag (which is ignored on most phones, but believe it or not, setting autoload="true" is what actually allowed the videos to not play inline on certain devices. A bug on the device, I am sure...but without this tag the videos played inline on iPhone 4 with the latest iOS version.
You could do it very easily with phonegap; you already have your web page, so it would be much less work, probably.
You could get the videos from inside your apps bundle in ios, and then it wouldn't be hard to select the one with the best resolution for the device being used. You could also download the videos at the perfect format and resolution the first time your app plays from your server using the file api. That convined with the storage api is nice for actualizations.
There's a plugin I use for android, because video tag is sometimes bugged or doesn't work at all in older versions, https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins/tree/master/Android/VideoPlayer.
It only plays from web or sdcard, but that's rarely too bad.
I can't help you with black berry, but I'm pretty sure there must be a way of doing it. And, anyway, appcelerator doesn't support it yet, so you would probably had to do it natively. Even if there isn't a plugin for black berry, you'd probably have to chose between native developement and html5 player inside phonegap. I won't give you my opinion about it here, for I'm not the one to give it and Stack Overflow says I shouln'd give it anyway.
Our company is making a mobile version of our website. We have several product videos we want to show on the mobile version.
When I try to use
video
I get sound playing but a black screen on my htc incredible android os phone.
I'm thinking that the video is playing but in a different browser window. I need it to display all in one window without having to switch to a different window.
I tried the html embed tags and get no video or sound at all, from what I've read these tags are not very realiable cross browser.
I also just tried the html5 video tags below. I get an icon identifying that it's a video file but it doesn't play.
<video src="video.wmv" controls="controls">
your browser does not support the video tag
</video>
Is there a special format the video file needs to be in? Should I be using the href or embed tags, what other options do I have?
If it helps to know, I'm using the mobile doctype on my webpages.
Thanks
The video format you need to send to the browser varies by browser. Firefox supports Ogg Theora, everybody else seems to support H.264 in an MPEG-4 container (MP4 file.)
See here for an example: http://html5demos.com/two-videos
In any case, WMV won't work.
Android doesn't support the WMV format normally. Here is a list of the supported formats:
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html
If iPhone/blackberry/etc don't have a format in common, you may need some javascript magic based on the user-agent to choose which file to embed.
I've found a simple solution to my problem. YouTube. Upload videos on youtube that need to play on your mobile web site and they work. PERIOD.
No fuss! Just copy the embedded URL from the YouTube video page to your mobile page and your all set to go.
I'm not exactly sure how YouTube makes the videos compatible.I'm guessing when uploading the video it's automatically converted into several formats so that the right codec / container is played based on what smart phone is accessing the page.
This list is not extensive and I'll probably think of more later, but comment if you can think of any more advantages or disadvantages of using YouTube for mobile videos.
Advantages:
++ YouTube is universally accepted amongst most major smart phones (therefore your video should play!).
+ If you have limited bandwidth you don't need to worry about wasting any bandwidth of your own.
++ Easy to setup, little to no configuration (setting video resolution). It just works! (encapsulation...)
Disadvantages:
- YouTube symbol during video play back
- It's not hosted on your hosting service. May not be tracked by some analytic services. (requires custom tracking? onclick java-script event?)
- YouTube bandwidth may not be acceptable for smooth replay? (although from initial video viewing bandwidth seems acceptable (minimal buffering...), but not confirmed...). Probably mostly dependent on the cell phone 3g / 4g connection quality.
- limited video file size / resolutions? shouldn't be a problem because you'll want a lower quality video for smart phones.
I would like to know exactly how YouTube make it's videos compatible with smart phones so if necessary I could host the videos myself, but for now this seems to be the best choice.