# Basic HTML example
<video poster="preview_image.png" controls>
<source src="or_here.webm" type="video/webm" />
<source src="alternative_if_browser_cant_pay_first_source.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
<track src="optional_subtitles.vtt" kind="subtitles" srclang="de" label="Deutsch" default>
</video>
# Javascript API (notable methods and properties)
video = document.querySelector('video')
video.play()
video.pause()
video.load() // Reset to the beginning and select the best available source
video.currentSrc // The selected source
video.currentTime // The current playback time (in seconds)
video.ended // Whether the video has finished
video.muted
video.paused
video.readyState // See comments
video.volume
Comments
-
controls makes the browser show its own video controls
- The image given in
poster will be shown before the video was loaded/has started (and if the video cannot be loaded at all).
- The browser will play the first
source it can play (some video types are not supported in every browser). The video can also be given as src on the video element; however, this excludes the handy fallback mechanism.
- The
track element can be used to add either captions, subtitles, chapters, descriptions or similar metadata.
- If the video has not started to play and has not been seeked,
currentTime is the video's initial playback time. Setting this value seeks to the new time.
-
readyState returns a value in [0:4] indicating
its state
Show archive.org snapshot
.
Caveats
- On iOS, the
video.preload attribute is ignored. iOS seems to always load the full video once it has a src.
- When creating a video element with
document.createElement('video'), setting the muted attribute will not mute the video! Use video.muted = true instead.
Resources
Full Documentation on the video element
