When you create movies in Mimic, you can select between HTML5 or PDF output formats, depending on your needs. See Selecting the Default Movie Format.
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HTML5 Output
You can create movie output that can be accessed from a web server or locally on a desktop with the HTML5 format (WebM and MP4 files).
HTML5 is a movie format that uses the <video> element instead of <object> and can be viewed on any browser that supports HTML5 content. Most newer browsers support the <video> element, including Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari. Older browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 do not. HTML5 can also be used to generate a standalone video file to play your movies on an iPhone or upload them to YouTube or Vimeo.
Following are some important characteristics of the HTML5 format.
Video Formats—WEBM and MP4/h.264
At this time only a few video formats can be used with the <video> element. Two of the more prominent formats—WebM and MP4/H.264—are supported in Mimic. WebM is supported in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera browsers. MP4/H.264 is supported in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari browsers. What if some of your users have browsers that support WebM, while other users have browsers that support MP4/H.264? You can select both options, generating output in both formats. Depending on the browser being used, the appropriate format is displayed.
Output—Browser Files and Single Files for iPhone/YouTube
When you generate output for HTML5, many browser-related output folders and files are produced. The main entry file has an .htm extension. There are also various support folders and files that you will need in order for your movies to play in browsers correctly.
There is an optional check box to generate single video files. If you select this option, Mimic creates single .mp4 and .webm files and stores them in the "videos" subfolder. These files can be distributed by themselves, without any support folders or files. The regular browser-related files are necessary to view your movies in the correct browser. On the other hand, the single video files—.webm or .mp4—can be used to play movies in a standalone player. Single MP4 files can be used to view movies on the iPhone. You can play single MP4 or WebM files on YouTube and Vimeo.
For non-interactive movies (e.g., movies that do not contain buttons or input typing boxes designed to make users take action), one additional benefit of the single-file option is that future rebuilds are extremely fast because only changed frames are regenerated.
Example
You have a non-interactive movie that is 75 frames long and generate output with the single-file option enabled. Sometime after this, you make changes to two of the frames in that movie. When you click the button to build the output again, only those two frames are recompiled, which means the generation is much faster.
Note Some players do not support interactive movies (e.g., YouTube only supports non-interactive videos).
Note In order to generate single video files for HTML5, you must have Internet Explorer (IE) 9 or higher installed. Therefore, you must be working on an operating system that supports IE 9.
Note Selecting the option to create single video files will increase the generation time for movies.
Audio
Like the other output formats, you can incorporate audio into your HTML5 output in many ways.
- Audio is "stitched" to different points in time, just as you would find in YouTube videos. In the other output formats, this is not the case. As a result, if you skip forward or backward to begin playing the HTML5 video at a specific point, the audio will be precisely synchronized with that point in the frame or movie.
- If you have audio that is longer than the movie itself, the audio stops playing when the last frame is finished. Similarly, if you select the option to pause the timing on a frame, audio applied to the movie or frame stops playing when that frame pauses.
- The loop audio option will work only if the audio is shorter than the length of the frame.
Other Required Actions
In addition to generating the output, what other actions are required?
- MPEG-4/H.264 Encoder If you select the MP4/H.264 format, you need to download an encoder for it. Some encoders require a small fee. You can obtain a free encoder at https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ (both ffmpeg-git-full.zip and ffmpeg-git-essentials.zip will work). Then in Mimic's HTML5 Options dialog, you can navigate to the extracted \bin\ffmpeg.exe file.
- MIME Type (for FMV Files) If you have full-motion video (FMV) frames and put your movie on a server, you also need to install MIME types for HTML5 output.
More Information
For more information about the HTML5 video format, see http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp.
PDF Output
You can create print-based movie output with the Adobe PDF format. This output format is ideal for distributing print versions of your movies. You can also use this format to plan future movies or review existing ones.
Short for "Portable Document Format," PDF is an open standard format for electronic documentation exchange invented by Adobe. PDF files are used to represent a two-dimensional document in an device- and resolution-independent fixed-layout format.
