Now, if you visit facebook via iPhone or iPad, you will find out that videos(uploaded on facebook) don’t need Flash anymore to play. All facebook videos seem to be in HTML 5 format and as Safari for iPhone and iPad supports HTML 5, they can be streamed flawlessly!

According to ReadWriteWeb, the Facebook videos are not streamed via HTML5 but its by transcoding them to MP4 format.

“In our tests this morning, it appears that Facebook isn’t actually using HTML5 to display the videos. Instead, what appears to be going on is that Facebook.com is detecting that you’ve arrived to the website via the Safari web browser on the iPad. When you then attempt to play a video on the iPad, it doesn’t play inline (something that would have been a clear confirmation of an HTML5 implementation). Instead, Facebook is linking out to the actual video, transcoded to MP4, a video format that plays on Apple devices.

We confirmed this by uploading a video file to Facebook in WMV format (a non-iPad compatible video format) and then attempting to play it on the iPad. It played as an MP4 file”

Still it doesn’t confirm that facebook is not using HTML 5 to stream videos in iPhone and iPad. You don’t really need transcoding to play MP4 format video in Safari for iPhone and iPad, they can also be played by HTML 5. See this HTML 5 video demo http://html5demos.com/video on your iPhone or iPad, the video is being streamed in MP4 format (see the code behind below) via HTML 5 and it’s not transcoded.

As reported by TechCrunch, it is now officially confirmed by Facebook that it’s not HTML5. (tip by Imran Hussain in the comment section)

Whatever it is, I am glad to see facebook videos working on iPhone. Right now, it only works if you open the full site on your iPhone or iPad Safari browser. The facebook app for iPhone still needs an update to play these videos.