YouTube’s ‘State of HTML5’ Report

Google is a great advocate for open standards and has even deprecated its own technologies in favor of standard tools like HTML5. But there are times when it chooses proprietary, non-standard technologies if there are compelling reasons to do so.

In YouTube’s case, Google thinks there are. The Flash versus HTML5 debate is still raging and, while Google has been one of the biggest proponents of the HTML5 standard, it has also been a surprising ally of Adobe. While Youtube has been testing a HTML5-based video player, it doesn’t plan to ditch Flash any time soon and the site is now providing a detailed explanation of its decision.

“There's been a lot of discussion lately about whether or not the HTML5 <video> tag is going to replace Flash Player for video distribution on the web. We’ve been excited about the HTML5 effort and <video> tag for quite a while now, and most YouTube videos can now be played via our HTML5 player. This work has shown us that, while the <video> tag is a big step forward for open standards, the Adobe Flash Platform will continue to play a critical role in video distribution,” John Harding, Software Engineer at Google, explains.

YouTube lists several reasons why HTML5 is not suited for a site of its size and scope. The gist of it is, HTML5 doesn’t provide many of the more advanced features YouTube takes advantage of and it wouldn’t be able to provide much of the functionality of the site if it wasn’t using Flash.

HTML5 video codes war

The first problem is a question of video codecs. The biggest debate around HTML5 video has been around the choice of codecs. Most of the industry backed H.264, a free but proprietary format used widely, from video cameras to websites.

But the browser makers were split as Mozilla and Opera favored the open-source but technically inferior alternative: Theora. Flash on the other hand works in all browsers. The impasse may have been broken with the introduction of WebM, but it’s going to be a while before the new format becomes popular enough to be relevant and viable.

Video streaming and content protection

Another issue keeping YouTube from adopting HTML5 are the streaming capabilities which are lacking when compared to Flash. YouTube says it needs to have control over things like buffering and dynamic video quality, especially with full-length movies or live events.

And the site also needs content protection to appease the content owners. It wouldn’t be able to offer rental videos without it preventing users from making unauthorized copies. Flash offers all of these features, while HTML5 does not.

Embedding, full-screen video and webcam access

There are other problems as well, embedding doesn’t really work with HTML5. Most sites out there only accept Flash embedding and it comes with several tools that help in this context. Also, the site wants to ensure that the feature it builds into the video player are also available outside of YouTube.

There is also the issue of full-screen videos. Flash-based players can go to full-screen to make for a more immersive viewing experience, but HTML5-ones can’t, at least for now. Finally, Flash also provides access to an user’s microphone and webcam, very useful for creating a video on-the-fly.

“While HTML5’s video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs. Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it,” Harding concluded.