Displaying mp4, avi and mov video formats inside the HTML5 app

Question

How to play .avi and .mov video formats in html ?

We are developing the website, where the videos can be uploaded, using html5, videos uploaded are of .ogg, .mp4, .webm. We have native android and ios applicaitons, where the videos can be uploaded of .mov and .avi formats.

Our application should be able to play the videos of .mov and .avi formats.

Request you to please let us know on how to display .mov, .avi formats without any conversion in server side.

Answer 1

.avi files can contain video encoded using any codec but in practice they contain video encoded using the old xvid/divx codecs.

HTML5 supports the x264 and vp8/vp9 codecs.

Flash supports the x264 and the old sorenson codecs.

xvid/divx cannot easily be converted to any of these codecs withouth transocing the hole stream. So there is not quick and easy client-side solution.

As a server side solution for converting .avi to .mp4, avconv and ffmpeg are very popular, widely sued and free. And of course there is a multitude of commercial solutions, too.