Facebook video has NOT gone HTML5, just preparing for video playback on the app

by Justin Horn on Apr 27th, 2010 @ 1:40 pm

A lot of blogs are reporting on the find by Mac Stories that Facebook can now play HTML5 videos from Safari directly on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. I discovered that the video wasn’t using a HTML5 video player, but just a link directly to the video file which played in QuickTime.

Basically what Facebook is doing is converting new video uploads to the H.264 video format, which is compatible with the iPhone OS. Even though this isn’t true HTML5 support, it’s the first step. They can now easily build a HTML5 player based on the new video format.

This also means they can add support for videos in the Facebook app, a highly demanded feature. I imagine they will start to convert all their old video to the new format, just like YouTube did before the iPhone came out. A video of mine from about 5 months ago wouldn’t play at all, so it looks like they still have a lot of work to do. Once this conversion is done I’m sure they will release an update to the app to play videos!

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View 2 Comments
Apples & Oranges, iPad, iPhone, iPod

1.
1. Alexis

   May 2nd, 2010 7:37 pm

   

   the Facebook app is made by a 3rd party person that said they were not going to make any updates or new apps for the iphoneOS…so who knows if this will be done

   besides they haven’t even made a new Facebook app for the iPad

2.
2. Facebook app update adds video | When Will Apple?

   June 19th, 2010 10:07 am

   [...] reported back in late April that Facebook was encoding new videos and converting old ones to the H.264 format the iPhone can [...]

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