There have been significant improvements to the way that various platforms support video and in particular allow its embedding in other platforms. Not being clear about which is the best platform to support video I have been experimenting with Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, YouTube and Vimeo. Below you can see the same video supported on each of these platforms and see how it performs on your device. Older phones, especially those with fewer pixels and lower performance, struggle with video.
I have followed the instructions from each of the platforms (Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, YouTube and Vimeo) on how to embed video in this page, in order to see which ones render best on various phones.
I have copied the embed code exactly as suggested by the corresponding platform, rather than tidying it up.
This is Twitter
— Peter Henderson (@systemsart) 31 October 2018
This is Instagram
This is Vimeo
Sunset - Imaginary Landscape from Peter Henderson @ Systems Art on Vimeo.
This is YouTube
This is Facebook
These embeds render differently on each browser and each phone/tablet that I have tried. some render more slowly than others, some play in place and some don't, some go on to offer alternative viewing which may not be what is required.
I assume most of the viewers of my stuff are using a phone and some of them are on 3G, so speed of starting is probably the most important criterion at the moment.
I was motivated to carry out this test because I noticed that some links in legacy posts on this blog (from 2015) were broken. This was because they used embed code that was no longer valid. I am assuming that if I stick to major platforms this problem will not arise in future.