Getting a video element on the page (for firefox3.5 anyway) was not an issue. The video tag was easy to understand. It was even fairly simple to begin the construction of my own interface – instead of using the default ‘controls’. But what I am confused about is why?

All this clamor around open video and the new html spec have claimed to remove the ‘walled garden’ that flash is within the context of a page. Meaning that while users can see and interact with the content on the page, machines and code can not.

Now with the new html 5 video tag, spiders and other software can now identify the fact that there is a video on the page.

Can someone please help me understand how that is so much different than flash?

Whether or not the machine or software can identify video embedded on a page is still moot point until we can train that ‘reader’ to parse and understand the contents AND context of the video.