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4.8.6 The video element

Categories:
Flow content.
Phrasing content.
Embedded content.
If the element has a controls attribute: Interactive content.
Palpable content.
Contexts in which this element can be used:
Where embedded content is expected.
Content model:
If the element has a src attribute: zero or more track elements, then transparent, but with no media element descendants.
If the element does not have a src attribute: zero or more source elements, then zero or more track elements, then transparent, but with no media element descendants.
Content attributes:
Global attributes
src
crossorigin
poster
preload
autoplay
mediagroup
loop
muted
controls
width
height
DOM interface:
interface HTMLVideoElement : HTMLMediaElement {
           attribute unsigned long width;
           attribute unsigned long height;
  readonly attribute unsigned long videoWidth;
  readonly attribute unsigned long videoHeight;
           attribute DOMString poster;
};

A video element is used for playing videos or movies, and audio files with captions.

Content may be provided inside the video element; it is intended for older Web browsers which do not support video, so that legacy video plugins can be tried, or to show text to the users of these older browsers informing them of how to access the video contents.

In particular, this content is not intended to address accessibility concerns. To make video content accessible to the partially sighted, the blind, the hard-of-hearing, the deaf, and those with other physical or cognitive disabilities, a variety of features are available. Captions can be provided, either embedded in the video stream or as external files using the track element. Sign-language tracks can be provided, again either embedded in the video stream or by synchronizing multiple video elements using the mediagroup attribute or a MediaController object. Audio descriptions can be provided, either as a separate track embedded in the video stream, or a separate audio track in an audio element slaved to the same controller as the video element(s), or in text form using a WebVTT file referenced using the track element and synthesized into speech by the user agent. WebVTT can also be used to provide chapter titles. For users who would rather not use a media element at all, transcripts or other textual alternatives can be provided by simply linking to them in the prose near the video element. [WEBVTT]

The video element is a media element whose media data is ostensibly video data, possibly with associated audio data.

The src, preload, autoplay, mediagroup, loop, muted, and controls attributes are the attributes common to all media elements.

The poster attribute gives the address of an image file that the user agent can show while no video data is available. The attribute, if present, must contain a valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded by spaces.

The image given by the poster attribute, the poster frame, is intended to be a representative frame of the video (typically one of the first non-blank frames) that gives the user an idea of what the video is like.

video . videoWidth
video . videoHeight

These attributes return the intrinsic dimensions of the video, or zero if the dimensions are not known.

The video element supports dimension attributes.

The poster IDL attribute must reflect the poster content attribute.

This example shows how to detect when a video has failed to play correctly:

<script>
 function failed(e) {
   // video playback failed - show a message saying why
   switch (e.target.error.code) {
     case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_ABORTED:
       alert('You aborted the video playback.');
       break;
     case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_NETWORK:
       alert('A network error caused the video download to fail part-way.');
       break;
     case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_DECODE:
       alert('The video playback was aborted due to a corruption problem or because the video used features your browser did not support.');
       break;
     case e.target.error.MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED:
       alert('The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.');
       break;
     default:
       alert('An unknown error occurred.');
       break;
   }
 }
</script>
<p><video src="tgif.vid" autoplay controls onerror="failed(event)"></video></p>
<p><a href="tgif.vid">Download the video file</a>.</p>