Hi folks,

Our library is planning to post some video guides in the next little while, and I'd like to make it as simple-for-me and accessible-for-everyone-else as possible.

Does anyone have a good handy guide/idea/workflow/etc on current best practices for presenting html5-happy video that has reasonably good cross-platform usability? (I'm thinking it needs to work in at least: IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iOS, Android.)

Here are some of the things I'm thinking about:


*        Which formats do you typically include?

*        How do you generate videos in those formats?

*        How do you know what codecs are in those files?

*        What (free if possible?) software are you using to accomplish this?

*        What kind of workflow for file creation makes this process manageable.

I've been looking at Mark Pilgrim's book HTML5 Up and Running (O'Reilley, 2010), and it makes the whole process seem pretty arduous. I'm hoping that that the last two years have brought some simplifying developments.

Pilgrim recommends the following formats (in failover order):
H.264 mp4
WebM
Ogg Theora

His system for generating all of these files includes scads of software and tedious processes.

Anybody have an easier and/or more up-to-date approach?

Thanks
Ken