Evaluations of Existing HTML5 Video Players

Charly's Infusion Video Player

• https://github.com/lahabana/videoPlayer
• http://royalgiz.fr/videoplayer/html/VideoPlayer.html
• built using Infusion IoC
• support captions
• uses a copy of Antonio's caption conversion service (PHP app, created for OpenCaps, I believe?)

VideoJS

• http://videojs.com/
• uses flow player for flash support http://flowplayer.org/documentation/index.html
• uses Video for Everybody http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
• GPL 3
• includes an event system based on Resig's
• has a bunch of commented out stuff that messes with Array.prototype
• cleanly written and well documented - easy to read
• has an options block similar to jquery
• appears to have a strategy for adding and removing behaviour but not on a per instance basis
• markup and strings are hardcoded in a private function

mediaelement.js

• http://mediaelementjs.com/
• https://github.com/johndyer/mediaelement
• License: GPLv2/MIT
• polyfill: mimics the HTML5 MediaElement API for browsers that don't support HTML5
• CSS nicely namespaced
• The player uses hard-coded HTML with no means for customization
• Player broken out nicely into features
• claims to support <track> element

JW Player

• http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/
• http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/browser/trunk/fl5
• commercial license for commercial use (free for non-commercial use)
• plugin architecture
• includes plugins for captions and audio descriptions
• includes a Flash player (requires Flex SDK to build)
• does pseudo-streaming
• appears to do bitrate switching
• supports dynamic resizing via JavaScript
• good keyboard a11y

J-media element

• http://protofunc.com/jme/index.html
• http://html5video.org/wiki/JMediaelement
• https://github.com/aFarkas/jMediaelement/
• License: GPL2/MIT
• jQuery plugin
• includes a copy of JW Player and Cortada (Java)
• not compatible with mobile platforms
• demo shows resizable mp4 in a dialog (i.e. resizes with dialog - mp4 only?)

Kaltura

• http://www.kaltura.org/project/HTML5_Video_Player (MIT licence)
• http://www.kaltura.org/project/HTML5_Video_Media_JavaScript_Library (GPLv2 licence)
• http://code.html5video.org/projects/html5video/repository/show/trunk/mwEmbed
• MediaWiki plugin
• skins hard-code HTML markup
• skins pluggable - could write a skin that doesn't hard-code markup

jPlayer

• http://jplayer.org/
• https://github.com/happyworm/jPlayer
• License: GPL/MIT
• jQuery plugin but uses its own implementation of widget
• Flash-first, HTML5 as fall-back
• integrator doesn't write the <video> tag, the jPlayer plug-in does that
• seems quite skinnable (one demo shows a text-only audio player)
• infusion-style overridable selectors for all controls, feedback, etc.
• plugin figures out whether to use html or flash, and then for every action (play, seek, etc) calls the right function
• nothing built-in for the <track> element (for captions or subtitles)
• basic kbd a11y in place
• could use improvements (e.g. enter activates buttons, but not spacebar)
• skin doesn't include visual feedback of kbd focus
• volume slider itself not kbd-a11y (only mute/unmute)

Video for Everybody

• http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
• basically:

  <video>
      <object>
          <img title="instructions to use the download link below">
      </object>
  </video>
  <a src="downloadable version of video"/>
  

Pseudo-streaming

• http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player/jw-player-for-flash-v4/12207/video-delivery-http-pseudo-streaming
• http://flowplayer.org/plugins/streaming/pseudostreaming.html
• relevant for Flash only ("For HTML5 mode, pseudostreaming works by default in all browsers and with all servers. It needs no specific provider and options.")
• needs a server-side module or script to enable it
• less secure than Flash’s official RTMP Streaming

OSM Player

• http://www.mediafront.org/project/osmplayer
• https://github.com/mediafront/osmplayer
• License: GPL3
• uses jQuery, themable using Themeroller
• designed to be used within a Content Management environment, such as Drupal, but can be used standalone
• has support for resizing
• includes templates that can be customized, but:
  • these seem to be for use with their OSM Player PHP Library?
  • the "required HTML" includes direct links to images in the template folder, so you'd have to change all of them?

Projekktor

• http://www.projekktor.com/
• http://code.google.com/p/projekktor-zwei/
• License: GPL3
• uses jQuery
• Controls HTML coded in a config block
• full screen support inspired by http://johndyer.name/native-fullscreen-javascript-api-plus-jquery-plugin/

Captionator

• http://captionatorjs.com/
• https://github.com/cgiffard/Captionator
• License: completely open ("You may copy and use this library as you see fit (including commercial use) and modify it, as long as you retain my attribution comment...")
• closed-captioning polyfill for HTML5: implements support for <track> element
• support for WebVTT, SRT, SBV, and SUB caption/subtitle formats
• namespaced to "captionator"
• can provide your own render function for the captions
• claims non-standard support for use of <track> for audio and video
  • small bug in video, but can get something to work
  • haven't been able to get audio to work
• bug: Captionator somehow interferes with native volume control?

Akamai’s Open Video Player

• http://www.akamai.com/HTML5
• http://openvideoplayer.sourceforge.net/html5video/
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/openvideoplayer/files/OVP%20HTML5/
• License: open (http://openvideoplayer.sourceforge.net/license)
• a 'family of industry best practice video player projects' including Flash, Silverlight, Apple iOS and HTML5
• HTML5 version doesn't seem to have been updated since Oct. 2010? http://sourceforge.net/projects/openvideoplayer/files/OVP%20HTML5/
• can't find HTML5 code in SVN repo? http://openvideoplayer.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/openvideoplayer/trunk/
• no documentation?

FlareVideo

• http://flarevideo.com/
• https://github.com/maccman/flarevideo
• License: MIT
• markup built by player, hard-coded in JS
• class names added by JS, hard-coded, sprinkled throughout

RSMS's HTML5 Video Player

• https://github.com/rsms/html5-video
• License: fully open / MIT
• jQuery plugin
• minimalist controls (mute, but no volume control; progress bar, but no scrubbing)
• uses <bar> tag for progress bar?

jQuery UI Video widget

• https://github.com/azatoth/jquery-video
• License: GPL/BSD/MIT
• uses $.widget()
• hard-codes markup and class names in the JS
• uses jQuery UI Themeroller

SublimeVideo

• http://blog.jilion.com/2010/01/25/introducing-sublimevideo
• Currently, a pay service: http://sublimevideo.net/
• "will be soon released for free (at least for non-commercial use)"
• "still in experimental state and only works on a limited number of browsers"

YUI HTML5 Video Player

• https://github.com/macinjosh/YUI-HTML5-Player
• License: open
• started as entry to the YUI 3 Gallery Contest in March 2010
• minified code committed to github

DailyMotion video player

• http://www.dailymotion.com/en/html5
• not actually something available - only on the dailymotion site