A question that has been deep on my mind for the past seven months (ever since apple sparked this whole anti-flash thing) is what is the truth behind the best technology to use for video and when. Those of us who have been a little more seasoned in the industry generally know that its not the tools that you use that make the difference, but rather the execution and more importantly, that the functionality for your target users is easy and seamless.

Robert Reinhardt will present, what I hope to be, an awesome overview of Comparing Web Video Technologies, from Flash to HTML5 to Silverlight. Based on the description of his talk, it surely looks like one of the sessions that anyone dealing with video online should NOT miss at FITC San Francisco.

Flash is dead. Long live HTML5. Or not? There's a lot of misinformation spread by both standards and plug-in advocates. In this session, you will learn the benefits and disadvantages to deploying online video with HTML5, Adobe Flash Player, and Microsoft Silverlight. Topics include codec decisions (AVC/H.264, WebM/VP8, and others), licensing, deployment scenarios (progressive download, adaptive HTTP streaming, and more).

Robert's talk came out of the need to share what he knows about all of the codecs, having authored several books and even building a business just about online video encoding. In preparation for his talk, you should checkout his blog post, The Flash world that the standards people do not see - it gives very good insight into explaining the truths and myths around much of the Flash debate as of late.