14 DAY TRIAL // The online video market is taking off, but it's also getting a lot more fragmented. Devices without Flash support were bad enough, now browser makers are taking sides choosing what formats to support in HMTL5. For users and publishers alike, things are becoming unjustifiably complicated. Encoding.com believes it has a solution and has launched Vid.ly a service which ensures that videos are playable on any device and browser.
"Today`s innovative world of smart phones, tablets, and HTML5 browsers has made it challenging for all of us to publish a video that can be watched anywhere and everywhere," the Vid.ly homepage reads.
"Different devices and browsers require different video codecs and screen sizes require a video to be converted into to many different formats and sizes. With vid.ly you simply give us your video and we give you back a universal video url that will play your video absolutely everywhere," it explains.
Vid.ly works, in a way, like an URL shortener for video. Provide users with one link and Vid.ly will serve the video in the appropriate format depending on the browser and device.
You can provide a video from various sources both online - HTTP, FTP, Amazon S3 or other cloud providers - and offline from your hard drive.
Vid.ly processes the file and converts it into a variety of formats and resolutions to ensure that there is an option for all devices.
On the desktop, all videos are encoded with a 640x390 resolution and at a 512k bitrate, however, the codec varies from browser to browser, WebM for Chrome and Chromium, OGG for Firefox and Opera, MP4 for IE and MOV for Safari.
On the mobile front, Android and iOS devices are supported, as well as BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson devices along with the Opera Mini browser. The Nintendo Wii, Sony PSP and Nindendo DS are also supported.
One caveat is that all videos, except on the iPad, are encoded with a 512k bitrate, though the resolution varies greatly, resulting in poorer quality for higher-resolution videos. Vid.ly is still in private beta, but is free, for now, though there is a Vid.ly Pro service coming.