How to play an AVI file in a video tag?

Question

I'm wondering if it's possible to make a browser play a AVI file within a video tag.

Everything I found on the web talking about it focus on MP4 and Ogg formats but nobody talks about the AVI format.

The only solution I found is to drop the video tag and make the video playable using JW Player.

Answer 1

Only the DivX web player can stream avi files. actually, theres a plug in for vlc to stream avi files also, but its buggy.

Sometimes it's a pain in the ass to get a solid answer. its one of the big sucks of the internet.

<object id="ie_plugin" classid="clsid:67DABFBF-D0AB-41fa-9C46-CC0F21721616" 
            width="660" 
            height="300" 
            codebase="http://go.divx.com/plugin/DivXBrowserPlugin.cab"> 
<param name="custommode" value="stage6" />
<param name="autoPlay" value="false" />
<param name="src" value="link-to-avi" />
<param name="bannerEnabled" value="false" />

<embed id="np_plugin" type="video/divx" 
src="link-to-avi" 
custommode="stage6" 
width="660" 
height="300" 
autoPlay="false"  
bannerEnabled="false"
pluginspage="http://go.divx.com/plugin/download/">
</embed>
</object>

note where it says "link-to-avi" twice :)

Answer 2

Today there are excellent approaches to deal with it. One of them is the module fluent-ffmpeg found on npm.

It requires the previous installation of FFMPEG

The support of avi isn't direct. It will be necessary build a server with node to serve your html.