One of the most revolutionary concept introduced by HTML 5 is the native support of audio and video playback in web pages.

Two new HTML elements have been defined for that purpose: <audio> and <video>, based on the generic media element type.

Media elements use a common set of attributes:

• src: defines the source of the media to render,
• autoplay: boolean to activate|prevent immediate playback,
• loop: boolean to activate|prevent automatic looping on content,
• controls: boolean to display|hide browser playback user interface.

<video> and <audio> elements can contain elements to be displayed to the user in older browsers that do not support these new elements.

Below is an example of how to use the <audio> element:

<audio src="audio.ogv" controls width="100" height="50">
    <a href="audio.ogv">Listen</a>
</audio>

Alternatively to the src attribute, the content to be rendered can be specified using one or more <source> elements, each of them describing a specific media resource.

Each <source> can be identified by its src and type attributes, optionally complemented by a codecs attribute:

<audio controls width="100" height="50">
     <source src="audio.ogg" type="audio/ogg; codecs=vorbis">
    <source src="audio.spx" type="audio/ogg; codecs=speex">
    <source src="audio.oga" type="audio/ogg; codecs=flac">
</audio>

The <video> element has an optional poster attribute that can be used to define an image to be displayed before the video is played:

<video src="oggy.ogv" poster="oggy.jpg" />

These new media elements also support a set of handy javascript method, properties and events, to allow the fine-grained control of the rendered UI.

• play()
• pause()
• currentTime: current playback time,
• duration: overall duration of the media,
• playbackRate: playback speed (can be negative !),
• onplay(): content has just start playing,
• onpause(): content playback has just been paused,
• onerror(): an error occurred,
• …

<script>
function playVideo(url){
     var video = document.getElementById("video");
     video.setAttribute("src",url);
}
</script>
<video id="videoPlayer" controls=false/>
<p>
     <button type="button"
             onclick="video.playbackRate = -2;">
         Rew
     </button>
     <button type="button"
             onclick="video.play();">
         Play
     </button>
     <button type="button"
             onclick="video.pause();">
         Pause
     </button>
     <button type="button"
                 onclick="video.playbackRate = 2;">
         FF
     </button>
</p>