Chrome 23 Beta Offers More Video Support

Google (News - Alert) has released an updated beta version of Chrome 23 – and it has a lot to offer users in the way of video.

“Today’s Chrome Beta update includes more tools for developers to take video engagement to the next level,” Google software engineer, Justin Uberti said in a recent blog post.

Chrome features the PeerConnection API. That lets developers make Web apps with real-time audio and video calling. There is no plug-in required.


Image via Shutterstock

Also, PeerConnection and the getUserMedia API are upgrades for WebRTC. 

The Chrome update also has track support for HTML5 video. That means it can add subtitles, captions, descriptions, chapters and metadata to videos. Also, videos can be split into sections. Practically, PC Magazine reported that track lets videos “be enhanced with metadata such as a Google Map showing a biker’s route and a Google Street View from the biker’s location.”

“Track provides developers with a unified, programmatic mechanism for doing all these things in the HTML DOM and Javascript,” Uberti added in the blog post.

The new version also features the MediaSource API. It offers video playback that avoids excessive buffering and start-up delays for videos, despite any speed fluctuations in the network or computer.

In a related matter, Chrome recently increased its market share – and the recent improvements may further this trend.

“Chrome has slowly but surely marched towards Internet Explorer at the top of the browser market,” according a recent report.  “Over the summer, in fact, Google's browser owned 19 percent of the space, putting it just behind Firefox's 20 percent share. Internet Explorer owned 54 percent of the browser market.”

Earlier this year, Chrome had 310 million active users, up from 160 million a year ago. Google first released the browser in 2008.