YouTube weighed in Wednesday on the question of whether HTML5 is ready to replace Flash Player as the preferred video-distribution vehicle for the web — an idea first proposed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in April. According to a new YouTube blog post, Adobe Flash currently provides the best platform for meeting the video-distribution requirements of the online service.
Though the video support built into HTML5 enables YouTube to deliver most of the service’s content and features to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player, YouTube software engineer John Harding observed that HTML5 has substantial shortcomings.
“We’ve been excited about the HTML5 effort and video tag for quite a while now, and most YouTube videos can now be played via our HTML5 player,” Harding wrote in a blog. “This work has shown us that, while the video tag is a big step forward for open standards, the Adobe Flash platform will continue to play a critical role in video distribution.”
Flash Player Advantages
According to Harding, one of the drawbacks of HTML5 is that the next major revision of the HTML standard currently under development does not address video-streaming protocols. By contrast, Flash Player provides fine control over buffering as well as dynamic quality control, Harding wrote.
“Flash Player addresses these needs by letting applications manage the downloading and playback of video via ActionScript in conjunction with either HTTP or the RTMP video-streaming protocol,” Harding wrote.
Furthermore, Harding observed that Flash Player’s ability to combine application code and resources into a secure, efficient package has been instrumental in enabling YouTube videos to be embedded in other web sites. “While HTML5 adds sandboxing and message-passing functionality, Flash is the only mechanism most web sites allow for embedded content from other sites,” he wrote.
Other Flash Player advantages over HTML5 include the ability to enable…