Your Shortcut to HTML5 Video Support


Written By: Alan Ramaley, CTO, thePlatform

We've been geeking out over the iPads lying around our office, watching videos on sites that we've helped customers build. Being a white label system, we let our customers speak for themselves, but if you've watched a video on an iPad you've probably hit our systems. It's clear that the tablet form factor is perfect for online video, and whether it's an iPad, Android device, tablet PC, or whatever else gets leaked to Gizmodo next, we think that's where a lot of consumption is going to happen.


Check out a demo of our HTML5 Player.

So, based on the work we've been doing, we’d thought we'd write up some notes on how we've traditionally approached these kind of multi-format, multi-environment players, and show how we carry this tradition forward in HTML5. People following the format debates—Flash over RTMP, MPEG-4 over HTTP, On2 VP8, Ogg, the various fragment-based formats like Apple live streaming, Silverlight Smooth Streaming, Akamai HD, Adobe’s Project Zeri, etc.— can find themselves struggling to make the right choice, and we’d like to help them avoid the mistakes we’ve seen in other HTML5 video frameworks.

Our new white paper, Building Real-World Video Sites in HTML5, is for readers familiar with player technologies in particular, and web development in general. But it also has value for non-technical audiences, as it points out the issues that any real HTML5 player framework has to solve. By the end of the whitepaper, you should have a very clear view of thePlatform's HTML5 support, and it should also be clear that it's the most complete, thought-through offering out there.

Check out our embeddable HTML5 player below:



When you’re ready, you can start building HTML5 players using the latest version of our Player Development Kit. Our partners are quickly updating their controls to support HTML5 video, and you can start using these JavaScript libraries today:

  • To support ad insertion into PDK-based HTML5 video players, LiveRail has a JSON endpoint for their ad delivery system and a set of JavaScript functions that handle ad display, behavior, and tracking.
  • VodPod has developed a single embed code for both Flash- and HTML5-compliant video.

    • “Working with thePlatform’s new HTML5 PDK was a great experience – the framework is extremely robust and enables a full advertising experience almost parallel to Flash. As partners, we were able to easily integrate our HTML5 plug-in to give our customers a cross-platform, cross-device advertising experience. This is very exciting for us, and I believe for the industry as a whole. This type of easy integration is exactly what the advertising space needs to propel cross-platform delivery forward.” -- Andrei Dunca, CTO LiveRail

    Partners Auditude and FreeWheel are also working on their own PDK integrations for HTML5 video.

    If you’re not yet using the PDK, contact your Account Manager at thePlatform to get set up.

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