QO on HTML 5 and FLASH

There has been a lot of talk on the web about HTML 5 and and the death of FLASH.  Most people will never really notice a difference but to us (the filmmakers) it can change our whole online distribution methods.

Right now we have to encode our videos two ways:

1. H.264 (commonly used (but not a "standard") codec)
&
2. FLASH (commonly used 'proprietary' codec)

Now, it really isn't a huge deal to encode both ways.  It just takes a little more time.  What we are having an issue with is being able to view our content from anywhere.  This includes at home on a desktop, on your mobile phone, and soon on other mobile devices (ipad, HP slate, joojoo, ect.)  Some of these platforms will support Flash, some will not.  We have been able to remain visible on the web by spreading our content across multiple outlets.

We understand the importance of quality, and want our content to look great however you view it.  Quality does not stop at the clarity of one fram though.  When watching a video on the web the experience begines when loading does, and can be lessened when a video is forced to pause and load/buffer.

Flash has been great for us because it offered small file sizes, which means our content can be viewed uninterrupted.  Great! But not all sites support flash now.

H.264 has been great for us because it offeres very high quality, but the file sizes are larger than flash.  That causes some content to load slower especially on mobile devices.

Sooooo.... what does all this really mean?  It means that content producers (like Quarter Orange) may never have a single standard to go by so we will have to act in a way that will best serve our needs.

What we will be doing in the next couple months is moving away from FLASH (sorry ADOBE, we still love you!)  Soon we will change to an HTML format.  This will make our site quarterorange.com viewable on any device.

We decided to make this change for a few reasons. The mobile revolution that is upon us and the ease of updating (not all of us at QO can do FLASH)


I do want to say that I dont feel FLASH will forever die.  I actually have high hopes for it in the document world.  Adobe has already implemented FLASH into PDF and the possibilites there can be endless.

I know this may not make much sense with my rambling and what not, so if you have any question please let me know!  Video is still waiting to break out on the web.