Video playback solution

Question

I need to implement video playback capabilities within a CMS on a html5 liferay portal application. I have tried my hand with google and I am a little confused.

1. I dont have a streaming server, so progressive downloading is the way to go?
   
2. The and properties have different support in different browsers. How do I implement a solution that is consistent across all the browsers?
   
3. Would I need to implement a JS video player - Open Video player or JWPlayer or Flow player? Any suggestions?
   
4. What about performance? And which file types are supported across the browsers. I am mainly looking at IE here.
   
5. Basically need a few pointers regarding where to get started.
   

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

* I dont have a streaming server, so progressive downloading is the way to go? You could either host the videos yourself and deliver as progressive download, or there are 3rd party solutions (eg Wowza) that you can use to deliver various streaming formats if that's important/viable

* The and properties have different support in different browsers. How do I implement a solution that is consistent across all the browsers? If you are targeting modern browsers then the tag in HTML5 is very flexible (though only supports progressive video in most cases). Different browsers support different containers/codecs (.mp4, .webm, .ogg) so you will need multiple source files

* Would I need to implement a JS video player - Open Video player or JWPlayer or Flow player? Any suggestions? You don't need to use anything other than the basic tag, however most of the open source player libraries for HTML5 do include a lot of the logic for you, and provide fall-back Flash players which can help with cross-platform and older browsers

* What about performance? And which file types are supported across the browsers. I am mainly looking at IE here. Any of the modern browsers are pretty comparable for playback performance so you shouldn't have too many issues unless you're trying to send very high bitrate video to lower spec machines. This article - http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/video/basics/ - is a great starting point