Beginning HTML5 Media: Make the Most of the New Video and Audio Standards for the Web

Beginning HTML5 Media, Second Edition is a comprehensive introduction to HTML5 video and audio. The HTML5 video standard enables browsers to support audio and video elements natively. This makes it very easy for web developers to publish audio and video, integrating both within the general presentation of web pages. For example, media elements can be styled using CSS (style sheets), viewed on a mobile device, and manipulated in a Canvas or an audio filter graph. The book offers techniques for providing accessibility to media elements, enabling consistent handling of alternative representations of media resources. The update includes all of the changes and revisions since the first HTML5 draft.

Beginning HTML5 Media dives deep into the markup that is introduced for media element support in browsers. You’ll explore the default user interface offered through browsers for media elements, as well as the JavaScript API provided to control their behavior. You’ll also learn how to account for H.264, WebM and Ogg Theora codecs as well as explore the emerging Web Audio API standard, which provides an extensive set of hardware-accelerated audio filters to achieve a level of audio signal manipulation in the browser previously only available to audio professionals.

What you’ll learn

• How to create cross-browser markup in HTML to include audio and video into your web pages
• How to replace the default controls of web browsers with your own or "skin" your media player
• How to use the JavaScript API for media elements
• How to integrate media elements with other HTML5 constructs such as CSS, Canvas, or Web Worker Threads
• How to make audio and video accessible
• How to use media fragment URIs to address certain temporal subparts or tracks of a media resource
• How to work with the Web Audio API

Who this book is for

This book is for those who are proficient in authoring and publishing Web pages, but have never utilized audio and video. It will also help those proficient in the use of Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, or QuickTime to understand what is happening in HTML5 media and how to use the new media elements.

About the Authors

Dr. Silvia Pfeiffer has worked on novel media technology for more than 15 years and is an internationally renowned expert in new Web video standards. Silvia is originally from Germany, but now lives in Australia.

Tom Green is a professor of interactive media in the School of Media Studies at Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto. He has written four previous books on Macromedia technologies, and many articles for numerous magazines and web sites, including the MX Developers Journal, Community MX, and Computer arts. Lastly, he has spoken at over 20 conferences internationally, including FITC, MX North, Digital Design World, TODCON, and SparkEurope.