open web video screencast #3 – creating your own player
by Christopher Blizzard
Chris Double posted about this but I thought it might be worth it to put together a simple video screencast of what this actually looked like in practice. It’s a damn neat idea and opens up all kinds of possibilities. Once again, with video as a first class citizen on the web, what can people dream up?
It’s just my name :)
Hans Schmucker, pronounced “huns shmookair” (with a short “oo” as in “foot”)
About the bookmarklet not having a title: This is because it has a fixed icon, which sadly is not shown with the default configuration on macs.
Haha, sorry about the name thing. Should that u have an umlaut over it?
It’s an awesome hack. Keep us on the loop if you’re doing anything with 3D. We’re going to make some announcements about that pretty soon.
You mean something like this:
http://www.tapper-ware.net/devel/js/JS.StereoVideo/real3d.xhtml
The controls are aweful and it’s totally unoptimized, but it works:
LMB drag is walking/strafing and RMB drag is turning/flying. (Hit play to make it work).
Don’t worry about the name, just wanted to explain. And there are no umlauts whatsoever :)
About 3D: Are you talking about vlad’s 3D context? I’ve worked with it a while back (until it broke) and it’s pretty good stuff, although sometimes a bit overly complicated as it’s based on the low level OGLES api, which is very flexible, but not exactly fun to use.
That demo is pretty cool. Needs some worker threads to improve interactive performance if that’s possible.
Re: the 3D stuff, yeah, I’m talking about Vlad’s stuff. We need some libraries on top of that to make it more fun to use. But we also want to enable people to get down as low as possible.
Adding video (and audio!) into the set of “simple pieces, cleverly composed” we have on the web (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc) is going to unleash an amazing amount of creativity… and creative destruction. ;-)
So much awesome!
Is that a Personas Minefield theme? Or how did you get that Minefield logo to show on your chrome?
Yep, it’s the minefield persona. Right now I’m running a foxeh one. Cute little fox character in my toolbar.
Can’t wait to hear what’s going to happen with the3D context. To be honest, I thought it was dead and burried when vlad stopped posting about it and I can’t help getting goosebumps thinking it might end up in a not too distant Firefox release.
Another little demo I’ve just written that might be of interest:
http://www.tapper-ware.net/devel/js/JS.VideoViz/index.xhtml
It’s a real-time music visualizer that gets is raw data encoded in the video stream. It’s not 3D, but still pretty nice.
That’s pretty cool, man.
Of course, the song is great and I keep listening to it. That helps. :)
Same here. I really wento to ccmixter because I thought I could at least find something to use in the demo. Nothing good, but just something. Then I came across this little beauty and now it’s stuck in my head and I can’t get it out.
Anyway, I’ve updated the code to make it at least a bit more readable (mainly replacing arrays with objects).
Color me somewhat amused at Saget; when you first hesitated over the link I had a strong feeling it wasn’t going to go anywhere good, and from each half-second in here it seems it probably didn’t. Apparently Saget’s amazingly foul-mouthed given what one might naively expect due to his appearances in America’s Funniest Home Videos and Full House. I happened to see a bit of the Comedy Central “roast” of him back last summer, and my low expectations from what had previously only been hearsay were easily not reached, pretty much a constant stream of filth out of him and the others in the show.
Videobloggers are getting pretty excited. Check out this screencast where he helps explain why the Ogg/theora + the tag are so cool: http://reports.graymattergravy.com/2009/03/16/html-5-ogg/
Its pretty important that we talk about the quality (or coming quality) of Ogg/Theora to convince video creators to make the switch from H264.
I think the quality question is probably the wrong one to focus on. We’ll do pretty well vs. H.264 with the new encoder, but it certainly won’t blow them away. I think that url above shows the real value – easy to work with and easy to install. And it’s the longer-term stuff that’s important. What happens when we can start building open HTML-based tools around it? Those are the neat things.
True. We shouldn’t make the quality of Ogg/Theora the main focus, but video creators will wonder what the evolution of the codec will be. My concern is if creators feel the codec is dead in the water, why use it? The tag is cool, and Ill just keep using .mov with this new tag.
You presented good logic right here: in the long term, a FOSS codec like .ogv that becomes widely used will attract more developers that will continually improve it. Message: It’s worth using Ogg/Theora because it is the new standard.
.ogv is the container. The codec inside of it, Theora, works pretty well for smaller videos. The evolution there looks like:
1. The encoder is getting some improvements to make it competitive. That doesn’t require new decoders, which means that everyone gets the benefit once the new encoder is in use.
2. If we want to talk about post-Theora we should talk about Dirac or a bunch of other stuff that’s happening out there. Theora doesn’t feel like the end, it feels like the beginning.
Understood. Video creators need to understand this reality. I love: “Theora doesn’t feel like the end, it feels like the beginning.” Currently, most video creators that have experience with Ogg/Theora think it’s a dead codec that is like bad Flash.
So as we start inviting people into the tent, remember that online video creators are concerned with quality of image first…and reluctant coders second. We have to affirm that all this will help them tell stories better and make their work look good. AND it’s all free and open. This is the order in which videobloggers will be concerned about.