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Brightcove has come up with a means of delivering high-quality video on popular devices such as Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch despite their lack of Flash support, by supporting the HTML5 standard.
Brightcove, which provides an online video platform, on March 29 “announced the Brightcove Experience for HTML5, a framework for publishing and delivering high-quality, interactive and advertising-supported Web video experiences for HTML5-compatible devices. The new platform solution, available free of charge to more than 1,000 Brightcove customers in 42 countries, will enable media companies and marketers around the world to easily expand the reach of their online video initiatives to popular consumer devices” such as Apple’s, the company said..
In a blog post on the announcement, Jeff Whatcott, senior vice president of marketing at Brightcove, said:
““As commercial availability of the Apple iPad draws near, we have been getting a lot of inquiries from customers looking for guidance on what they need to do to deliver great video experiences on these devices that exclusively support the HTML5 approach to video. These customers are excited about the possibilities of the iPad, but they also have concerns about what it will take to deliver great video experiences in this environment. They want to know what the tradeoffs and gotchas are, and what we’re doing to help them navigate this new landscape.”“
Moreover, Whatcott, formerly an executive at Adobe, the maker of Flash, added:
““One of the things you won’t see from Brightcove is the Flash-bashing rhetoric that you may hear elsewhere. Our work to support HTML5 is not about weakening Flash, it is about pragmatically solving problems for our customers. Flash is and will continue to be a critical platform for us and for our customers. The fact is, most online video is experienced through Flash today, and that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. 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. Our work with HTML5 is in addition to, not instead of, our work with Flash.”“
“The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 provides support for intelligent device detection, playlist rendering and playback of H.264-encoded video content,” the company’s announcement said. “Customers are using the Brightcove Experience for HTML5 today to build iPad-ready Websites. Over the course of this year, Brightcove will expand the Brightcove Experience for HTML5 to include full support for customization and branding of the player environment, advertising, analytics, social sharing and other capabilities currently found in Brightcove experience solutions for other platforms.”
The announcement continued:
““Brightcove customers already taking advantage of the Brightcove Experience for HTML5 solution to produce iPad-ready websites include The New York Times and Time Inc. The New York Times Company is a Brightcove investor.”“
“Our customers want to be able to deliver their video content to every screen without sacrificing the quality, interactivity and monetization capabilities they have come to expect from the Brightcove platform,” Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a statement. “The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 fills the gap between the current playback capabilities of the emerging standard and what our customers need to operate successful online video businesses.”
“Brightcove is committed to innovating on top of standards and driving them forward,” said Brightcove CTO Bob Mason. “The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 gives us the opportunity to take all of the knowledge we’ve gained about real-world success with online video and apply it to this new open standard.”
Describing the opportunities for publishers afforded by the Brightcove Experience, Whatcott said:
““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. However, as Richard Wong of Accel put it, In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It. 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. So much for reaping savings from the death of IE6. DIY-centric shops will be kept busy just making their video work and risk crowding out work that could make it great.For publishers who are using the Brightcove online video platform, the outlook is much more promising. We are investing to make it possible for them to deliver both Flash and HTML5 video experiences with equivalent capability without requiring a lot of extra work. That is our vision for the Brightcove Experience for HTML 5. Being able 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, etc. is where we are headed. Our customers rely on us to reduce the cost and complexity of making video part of their online strategy, and we intend to deliver on that expectation.”“
The company’s statement concluded:
““The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 is the latest in a series of product innovations that deliver on Brightcove’s vision of empowering media publishers to easily distribute high-quality video across any screen. Today’s announcement follows last month’s release of the Brightcove Mobile Experience for Flash Player 10.1 to support video for Google Android, Symbian S60, Palm webOS, Windows Mobile and Research in Motion BlackBerry. Brightcove has previously announced distribution capabilities for Internet-connected TV platforms and devices, including Yahoo! TV Widgets, Boxee, Roku and VUDU.For more information on the Brightcove Experience for HTML5, visit http://www.brightcove.com/en/video-platform/solutions/html5.”“