Operation Manual

114

Playing Video on a Web Page

In general, there are two ways of playing video on a web page:

 Using a web-browser plugin

 Using the HTML5 <VIDEO> tag, for browsers that support it

Unfortunately, the HTML5 standard did not actually specify what type of audio/video encoding

and container was to be supported. Therefore, even though the current versions of all major

browsers support the <VIDEO> tag, there is no single format that will work on all browsers.

Moreover, since the B264 is an encoder designed primarily for the broadcast market, it uses the

transport stream container, which is not supported natively by any browser

. Therefore, it is not

possible to use the HTML5 <VIDEO> tag with content generated by the B264.

In order to play the bitstream coming from the B264 in a web page, a plugin with the appropriate

audio, video and container support must be installed in the web browser. The Open-Source

VideoLAN player includes appropriate plugins that will work with the bitstream coming from

the B264. The VideoLAN player can be downloaded from:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

There are two types of plugins:

 ActiveX controls, used by Internet Explorer

 “Mozilla” (Netscape) style plugins, used by most other browsers (Firefox, Chrome,

Safari)

When installing the VideoLAN player, make sure to select the appropriate plugins for the

browsers you intend to use. The figure below indicates the choices to be made during the

VideoLAN installation in order to get the plugins installed on a Windows PC. If multiple

browser support is required, both types of plugins can be selected (but at least one “Mozilla-

style” browser must be already installed).

We recommend VideoLAN version 2.0.1 or later. Earlier versions had stability problems with

the Mozilla plugin and did not support HTTP Live Streaming.

A number of browsers support the MP4 container format, but this container does not support real-time encoded

video.