title: How to deal with poor HTML5 video performance in Chrome?
body: <p>Over a year ago we added an <a href="http://www.remobjects.com/tv/" rel="noreferrer">video page</a> on our site. At the time OGV wasn't very good, and there was no good WebM encoders available, so we decided to use HTML5 and h.264 for webkit browsers (Chrome, Safari, etc.) and then fallback to Flash for other browsers (using the same h.264 source file.) </p>
  
  <p>This has been working great for a while. Recently (month or two maybe, so over multiple Chrome versions - currently Version 24.0.1312.52 m) we discovered Chrome really lagging on the playback. We thought it was a server issue, so we upgraded the server, and it is still behaving the same. I remembered reading that Google wanted to drop h.264 and move everyone to WebM, and thought this performance was part of that. We converted some videos to WebM and tested them with Chrome and they lag just as bad. Same video (WebM) streams beautifully in FireFox, and the MP4 streams great in FireFox via the Flash plug in.</p>
  
  <p>I went to YouTube and turned on the HTML5 video support, and found the videos to lag in Chrome too (when running at HD) while they play fine in Flash mode. (Even when HTML5 is enabled, some videos still play via Flash.)</p>
  
  <p>Tested on both Windows 8 and Mountain Lion.</p>
  
  <p>I've talked to co-workers and they are seeing the same issues. So it isn't just me. So my question is: </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Is this an issue with our video encoding?</li>
  <li>Is it a bug with Chrome?</li>
  <li>Or is it just localized to us?</li>
  <li>Is there a way to deal with this besides switching back to Flash?</li>
  </ol>