By Chloe Albanesius
March 29, 2010
Do you want to develop video for Apple's upcoming iPad? Brightcove on Monday released a new solution that will allow publishers to develop video experiences for Flash and HTML5 without incurring extra costs.
"We are investing to make it possible for publishers who are using the Brightcove online video platform to deliver both Flash and HTML5 video experiences with equivalent capability without requiring a lot of extra work," Jeff Whatcott, vice president of marketing at Brightcove, wrote in a blog post.
Apple will start shipping the iPad on April 3, but the device will not include support for Adobe Flash. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs reportedly said the decision not to support Flash was because it it too buggy, and that HTML5 is the wave of the future. Adobe chief technical officer Kevin Lynch subsequently defended Flash as superior to HTML5 and accused Apple of being uncooperative in terms of getting Flash on the iPad.
Internet squabbles aside, the iPad will not include Flash support, which poses a problem for publishers developing in Flash who do not want to be locked out of the iPad market. Whatcott said Brightcove's Experience for HTML5 aims to solve that problem.
"For publishers who are used to building video experiences by cobbling together technologies on their own, the requirement to support HTML5 in parallel with whatever they are doing with Flash means unwelcome additional cost and complexity for their web development teams," Whatcott wrote. "[But] publishers really have no choice if they want to continue to maximize their audience. Dealing with web client fragmentation is going to be the reality for the foreseeable future."
Brightcove's HTML5 solution, therefore, will allow developers to "target HTML5 devices without sacrificing the ability to customize the playback environment, gather detailed analytics, manage multi-bit rate delivery, and monetize their video with advanced advertising," he said.
The solution icnludes an automatic device detection, which will detect a non-Flash device – like the iPad – and switch between Flash the HTML5 to suit the viewer's device capabilities. In addition to the iPad, the offering will also work on the iPhone and iPod touch, Brightcove said.
The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 will be added to the existing Brightcove Professional, Enterprise, and Express $499 editions. Customer already using these products can access the HTML5 capabilitites at no extra charge.
Whatcott stressed that HTML5 development is ongoing, so Brightcove will add more features to the product as the year goes on.
"In many ways HTML5 today is where Flash video was in 2002," he wrote. "Replicating the massive industry ecosystem of ISVs, tools, services economy, developer community, and knowledge economy that has grown up around Flash will not happen overnight. But we have already laid the foundations of HTML5 support, and we would expect to make very substantial progress over the rest of this year."
As a result, Whatcott said that Brightcove's support of HTML5 does not mean it will no longer support Flash. He criticized "Flash-bashing rhetoric" and defended the product.
"Our work to support HTML5 is not about weakening Flash, it is about pragmatically solving problems for our customers," he said. "Flash is and will continue to be a critical platform for us and for our customers."
At this point, most online video is still experienced via Flash and that will likely continue for the forseeable future, Whatcott said.
"We have a very strong strategic alliance with Adobe, and we continue to believe that it is in our interests and the interests of our customers to be at the forefront of innovation on around the Flash Platform," he concluded. "Our work with HTML5 is in addition to, not instead of, our work with Flash."
More detailed information about Brightcove Experience for HTML5 is available on the company's Web site.
by Rene Ritchie
Saturday, Apr 10, 2010
As he’s been doing a lot lately, Apple CEO Steve Jobs replied to an email from a developer concerned about iPhone 4 SDK’s ban on using cross-compilers like Flash CS5 or MonoTouch to create apps.
After a brief exchange about Daring Fireball’s article on the matter, Greg Slepak wrote:
I still think it undermines Apple. You didn’t need this clause to get to where you are now with the iPhone’s market share, adding it just makes people lose respect for you and run for the hills, as a commenter to that article stated:
[...] I don’t think Apple has much to gain with 3.3.1, quite the opposite actually.
To which Jobs sent (not iPhone or iPad this time, but from his Mac):
We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
That users are picking sides is interesting. Adobe wants to control the creation and distribution tools (Flash CS5 and the Flash plugin). Apple wants to control the creation and distribution tools (Xcode and App Store). There’s a battle going on for the next generation of computing, with Google, Microsoft (who won the last one) and others deep in the mix and they all want desperately to win. Both are good or evil depending on how closely their goals mirror the individual’s in question. So, while picking sides is inevitable for some, it’s also part of each company’s strategy.