The Blog


HTML 5′s Video Tag

No comments // Jan 31st, 2010 // Blog

I just had to try this to see if this works. Below, you should see either my reel or a little message saying that your browser doesn’t support this tag. I can’t wait until this becomes the standard and Flash is dead.

Update:
After a lot of tinkering over the last couple of days, I’ve figured out a few of things:

  1. Autobuffering is the really big problem with the HTML5 implementation. John Gruber has an excellent article about this on Daring Fireball. Basically, every HTML5 supporting browser except for Firefox starts downloading the video immediately no matter if you want to watch the video or not. This is bad news for slower connections, mobile browsers, metered bandwidth (like the 250MB iPad 3G plan), and if you plan on using the video tag for more than one video on the page. Firefox doesn’t autobuffer unless you specifically tell it to. That’s what it should do. Hopefully this will be fixed in th is developing standards and future versions of Safari, Chrome, and Opera.

  2. It’s kind of like the whole HDDVD and Blu-Ray battle all over again. This time it’s between MP4 and Ogg Theora. Safari (aka Apple Inc) supports only MP4. Firefox and Opera only supports Ogg Theora. Chrome supports both. The problem is that MP4 has licensing fees and Ogg Theora does not. Youtube high-quality and HD videos are MP4s. That’s terabytes and terabytes of data. I doubt Google is going to decide to just encode their entire library to OGV and abandon MP4. It would just be stupid. So for now, I’m going to encode all my videos to OGV as I don’t have so many. The code is setup so it prefers MP4 but will play the OGV if you’re browsing with Firefox or Opera.

  3. Notice I haven’t mentioned Internet Explorer yet. That’s because it doesn’t support HTML5. Oops. That’s why we have fallback code. In browsers that don’t support HTML, I’ll have the standard Flash player that I use anyway. So implementing the video tag will require me to not only encode all my videos to OGV (to supplement the MP4s that I already have) and still have the FLV player that I already have. For something that’s supposed to simplify everything, It’s sure adding a lot of code. That’s just the state of things today. In the future when everyone has browsers that support HTML5, it will be really simple

So why am I doing this? I like to tinker with my site, I like standards, and I want people to actually be able to watch my videos in Mobile Safari (iPhone, iPad, etc.). It’s just kind of lame how you can’t right now.


Welcome to beautiful El Segudo, CA

No comments // Oct 26th, 2009 // Blog

The beach in El Segundo

I’ve been in El Segundo for a couple weeks now and I do like this little part of LA.  The downtown area is kind of sleepy with nice little stores.  Above is the beach in El Segundo where I hear that you can actually have campfires!

However, it is pretty industrial.  The picture below is the view 180 degrees from the ocean.

The view behind the beach.


Three Things I Miss About Birmingham: Food Edition

No comments // Oct 26th, 2009 // Blog

I left Alabama three weeks ago and I miss the food already. Here’s the top three that I miss:

McAlister’s Sweet Tea

I didn't like sweet tea before this. Now I could drown in it.

I didn't like sweet tea before this. Now I could drown in it.

All my life, I’ve never really liked one of the staples of the south, sweet tea.  I always just found it to be a sickly combination of sugar and water with no presence of the second word in it’s name.  McAlister’s Deli, which is a chain, has done something great.  You can actually taste the tea!  I quickly became addicted to it, consuming it every time I went to one of their restaurants.  I guess I’m now part of their Tea Freaks army.

Here in Los Angeles, sweet tea doesn’t exist.  You can get Raspberry Tea, unsweetened iced green tea, and other teas with infused flavors, but nothing like sweet tea in the south.  I think it’s all just weird.  And I hate, hate, hate Raspberry flavors in anything.

Check out McAlister’s Deli.

Two glorious sandwiches after the break!

Read the rest of this entry »


Moving to LA on September 28th

No comments // Sep 7th, 2009 // Blog

So if you haven’t heard through some other method, I’m moving to Los Angeles on September 28th. I’ve had some good times in B’ham and I’ve gotten to work on some interesting stuff. It’s just time for new adventures!

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I will miss this guy though.


Website 90% done!

No comments // Jul 16th, 2009 // Blog

The website is 90% done! I’m just finessing a few more things and then I have to update and format my resume! I’ve added categories to the videos and an info page for each video which will have all the client and post house information. It’s really just a couple of things here and there and then I’m done.

This Sunday I’m going to tackle doing my demo reel. It’s going to be short as you can already see most of the videos in their entirety or in clip form on this website. It’s just going to be a 30-60 second promo for me.


Working on new site

1 comment // Jul 6th, 2009 // Blog

I’m currently redesigning this site before your very eyes. I’ve put up a sample of videos from the past two years on the front page for your viewing pleasure.


Hank Williams life-size statue