Q: how to force HTML5 video?
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Oct 22, 2014 4:08 PMby Kurt Lang,You can demand anything you want, but you can't force any web site to serve up content that's different from the way it's designed to work. If the embedded videos are Flash, then that's what's required to play them back.
Try to learn at little about the way web content works before making such posts.
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Oct 22, 2014 4:20 PMby John Galt,I don't have Adobe Flash installed, and YouTube videos play just fine in Safari 8. So do all other videos I have come across on various websites. If you find a site that seems to demand Flash Player, post its URL and I'll let you know what happens.
Don't tell me to get Chrome, I despise google, they MADE me a google plus account just to sign in and manage my youtube playlists.
That may be a clue. I have no Google account, plus or otherwise. Perhaps your account's YouTube preferences needs a setting altered to force it to use HTML5? Try logging out of Google completely. Eradicate all the bits with which Google litters your Mac (good luck with that) then try loading a YouTube video. That will essentially duplicate what I'm observing.
Try uninstalling Adobe Flash Player, using Adobe's uninstaller utility. Don't use anything else to eradicate it. Download the uninstaller directly from Adobe's website.
Not sure about Silverlight.
... but trying to get someone from apple to read this.
By the way Apple doesn't participate here, other than in a very limited manner. We are all users like yourself.
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Oct 22, 2014 4:31 PMby John Galt,John Galt wrote:
... Not sure about Silverlight.
Now I'm sure.
No Microsoft Silverlight installed here either, and Netflix plays just fine:
Something else is going on. I don't know what to tell you. Try contacting Netflix. Their technical support is actually pretty good.
Try contacting Google...
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Oct 23, 2014 8:30 AMby benji888,When you to go YouTube via an iOS device, which does not have Flash in it, I am playing HTML5 videos. But, if I go to YouTube from my Mac I have to install Flash, so, yes, I'm not requesting to watch something that is only available in Flash.
Try to be sure you know what you are talking about before replying to a post.
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Oct 23, 2014 8:40 AMby Kurt Lang,I am playing HTML5 videos.
And how do you know that?
YouTube has been converting their content away from Flash. As per your iPad example, most videos will play either via HTML5, or as a QT movie. But I still run across videos that will not play at all because they are still Flash. In order to play them, I use Puffin, which uses a remote server to run Flash content there, and then stream it to your iPad or iPhone as if it were playing on the device directly.
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Oct 23, 2014 8:46 AMby benji888,"I don't have Adobe Flash installed, and YouTube videos play just fine in Safari 8. So do all other videos I have come across on various websites. If you find a site that seems to demand Flash Player, post its URL and I'll let you know what happens."
I found a site: youtube.com! (yes I am using Safari 8, I did a clean install of Yo, so, there it is.) Which Mac model do you have? If you can do it on your Mac, then I don't need to contact google or netflix, I need to get Safari to tell the server to pull the HTML5 video.
"...Perhaps your account's YouTube preferences needs a setting altered to force it to use HTML5? ..."
Please tell me where these preferences are, I can find nothing, I have looked everywhere for some kind of setting for this.
"Try uninstalling Adobe Flash Player, using Adobe's uninstaller utility. Don't use anything else to eradicate it. Download the uninstaller directly from Adobe's website."
I don't need to, before I got flash, before I signed in to my youtube account it would not play, I tried and tried, it required flash player.
• Apple must have implemented this only on certain newer Macs, yet, I am sure my Mac will do it, as I read elsewhere that people were using Chrome for HTML5 video playback, and, in fact, it ran fine on a machine such as mine, better than playing flash (uses less processor power). So I know it's possible.
• Can anyone else tell me if there is some setting within Safari I can force HTML5 video playback somehow?
I even tried to go to youtube's mobile site, but, it redirects me.
arg.
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Oct 23, 2014 9:01 AMby John Galt,benji888 wrote:
"I don't have Adobe Flash installed, and YouTube videos play just fine in Safari 8. So do all other videos I have come across on various websites. If you find a site that seems to demand Flash Player, post its URL and I'll let you know what happens."
John Galt wrote:
... If you find a site that seems to demand Flash Player, post its URL and I'll let you know what happens.
In other words, post its URL and I'll let you know what happens.
• Apple must have implemented this only on certain newer Macs,
That is possible. The screenshot I posted was from my oldest Mac, a 2011 iMac.
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Oct 23, 2014 11:56 AMby benji888,Ok, so I read all your comments and took into consideration that someone said Chrome will play it. Well, here is what I found out.
1) First I tried turning on the developer menu in Safari and setting it as a chrome agent. That seemed to work, however, later, I found that I was indeed playing an HTML5 video.
2) I uninstalled Flash. I then (after restart), opened Safari and went to my YT watch later list, first video I played played fine. I went to play a Vevo video, and that requires flash. Then I went up in the list and got that message I needed flash again every time. Well, as it turns out, later, I try again and other videos played fine. ...Hulu wanted flash. ...Netflix still wanted silverlight.
3) I install Chrome browser. It will play everything, however, I found that it was using something built into chrome to play it. Netflix would play, but, not even in HD, never mind 1080p & dolby digital. So, I don't think it was playing netflix w/HTML5, but using a silverlight emulator or something.
4) Since Chrome was emulating flash, I decided to open activity monitor to see how CPU intensive it really was. Then I installed flash opened safari and played same source and see what CPU use was like (I used Hulu, because then I knew they both used Flash, and in full screen mode both times). Then I played an HTML5 youtube video. Google chrome used more CPU with their technique (before installing flash, and with flash installed, same results), than Safari with flash installed. But, the HTML5 video set to 720p at full screen, still used half the CPU that safari w/flash used. This is still ridiculous to me, that flash is still used at all.
4a) long story short, I found I could (right click) and find out if youtube video (or any video) was HTML5 or flash. So, after installing flash, I went to YT in Safari and this time it would play HTML 5 videos as HTML5 and Flash w/flash. The first time I used YT after unintstalling flash, after trying to play Vevo video, everything after that asked for Flash player, even though none of them actually need it. So, some kind of quirk there, not sure what end it was on.
(I can play netflix full 1080p & dolby digital w/my blu-ray player. But, I would still like to be able to play netflix in HTML5, 1080p/DD+ on my Mac.)
So, some videos on YouTube are not in HTML5 format, I tried several Vevo videos (on youtube) and they all seem to be Flash. But, can't we play these on iOS devices??? Something is amiss here.
• Anyway, I just wish I had more control over things. I want to be able to set Safari so that it tells the server that it wants to play HTML5 video, force that mode somehow, even if it has to tell the server it's an iOS device. (I tried to go to youtube's mobile site, but it redirects.)
• What does it take for major content providers like Hulu and Netflix to really use HTML5 and give us 1080p & DD+ on our macs?
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Oct 23, 2014 12:15 PMby benji888,I forgot to add pics, tried to edit, wouldn't let me save??
...
4) (see pics below) Since Chrome was emulating flash, I decided to open activity monitor to see how CPU intensive it really was (no other apps open). Then I installed flash, opened safari and played same source and see what CPU use was like (I used Hulu, because then I knew they both used Flash, and in full screen mode both times). Then I played an HTML5 youtube video. Google chrome used more CPU with their technique (before installing flash, and with flash installed, same results), than Safari with flash installed. But, the HTML5 video set to 720p at full screen, still used half the CPU that safari w/flash used, and these were 480p or less. This is still ridiculous to me...that flash is still used at all.
4a) long story short, I found I could (right click) and find out if youtube video (or any video) was HTML5 or flash. So, after installing flash, I went to YT in Safari and this time it would play HTML 5 videos as HTML5 and Flash w/flash. The first time I used YT after unintstalling flash, after trying to play Vevo video, everything after that asked for Flash player, even though none of them actually need it. So, some kind of quirk there, not sure what end it was on.
So, some videos on YouTube are not in HTML5 format, I tried several Vevo videos (on youtube) and they all seem to be Flash. But, can't we play these on iOS devices??? Something is amiss here.
• Anyway, I just wish I had more control over things. I want to be able to set Safari so that it tells the server that it wants to play HTML5 video, force that mode somehow, even if it has to tell the server it's an iOS device. (I tried to go to youtube's mobile site, but it redirects.)
• What does it take for major content providers like Hulu and Netflix to really use HTML5 and give us 1080p & DD+ on our macs?
(I can play netflix full 1080p & dolby digital w/my blu-ray player. But, I would still like to be able to play netflix in HTML5, 1080p/DD+ on my Mac.)
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Oct 23, 2014 12:31 PMby John Galt,OK, thanks for the clarification. It seems http://www.vevo.com/browse requires Flash, though I haven't run across any YouTube videos that do.
Google may be evil, but they're not stupid. They want as many people to use their services on as many devices as possible. Since the future belongs to power-sensitive mobile devices, they learned to migrate away from Flash a long time ago.
• What does it take for major content providers like Hulu and Netflix to really use HTML5 and give us 1080p & DD+ on our macs?
The best thing you can do is to accelerate Flash Player's well deserved demise by not patronizing those sites.
This is still ridiculous to me, that flash is still used at all.
I agree, if for no other reason that intrusive, resource-hungry advertisements tended to use Flash Player... badly. Unfortunately advertisers aren't stupid either, so I'm seeing a lot more HTML5 based advertisements whereas it used to be easy to avoid them by not having Flash Player installed.
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Oct 23, 2014 7:29 PMby benji888,"OK, thanks for the clarification. It seems http://www.vevo.com/browse requires Flash, though I haven't run across any YouTube videos that do."
I haven't been there yet. I was referring to music videos on YouTube, from Vevo's YouTube channel...those are strictly Flash.
"By the way the only streaming service that I am aware of that routinely uses 1080p and DD+ is Vudu, unless other vendors added that capability recently. Netflix has been inscrutable regarding the actual delivered content resolution."
I don't know if it's actually 1080p, but, I do get higher resolution, at least 720p & DD+ from Netflix over my blu-ray player. It'll play 720p (or more?) when it denotes "SuperHD" next to the title, and DD+ when it denotes 5.1 audio. I don't have a hulu+ account, so can't use hulu on that device, but, others use it w/a Roku, and they get 720p at least. I can attest to Vudu's ability to play 1080p DD+ via my blu-ray.
• I am wondering if HTML5 HD content via these streaming services has some kind of copyright encryption, that requires a hardware thing included in only recent Macs, going back to ? 2012? 2013? Maybe this is the real issue, not how powerful the processor is. Set-top boxes and internet capable blu-ray players probably have this decryption hardware built-in. ??
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Oct 23, 2014 7:48 PMby John Galt,Netflix is infuriating because I have no idea what they mean by "HD" or "SuperHD" or whatever. Why can't they simply say what it is? I'm reasonably certain the highest resolution they offer is 720p which isn't going to look so great on a 5K iMac.
• I am wondering if HTML5 HD content via these streaming services has some kind of copyright encryption, that requires a hardware thing included in only recent Macs, going back to ? 2012? 2013?
It has been proposed, but as of right now I don't believe HTML5 incorporates copyright protection for streaming content. On the other hand hardware acceleration may certainly be incorporated in Mac models other than yours. I have no 13" model MBPs to test. I do know that differences in GPU capability comprises a significant distinction between 13 inch models and all others, so it may not be strictly related to the particular model year.
