160% increase in H.264 video online since January

The increasing criticism of Flash as a vehicle for online video delivery (as well as Apple's dislike of Flash) appears to be driving the adoption of H.264 video. A recent study by video search site MeFeedia reveals a 160 percent increase in the proportion of video encoded in the iPad-friendly format since January of this year.

MeFeedia's indexing data was compiled from over 30,000 sources of online video, including Hulu, CBS, ABC, CNN, MTV, YouTube, and others. According to its data for the month of May, 26 percent of all video in its index was in H.264 format. That's up from just 10 percent in January—the month that Apple announced the iPad.

The report revealed that a lot of older content, including news and TV episodes, had not yet been reencoded from their largely Flash-based formats. However, most new content is being encoded in H.264, suggesting that the iPad is helping push adoption of H.264 and HTML5. Just before the iPad launch in April, a number of media companies announced plans to transition content from Flash-based players to H.264 video delivered via HTML5 specifically for the device. A side benefit of this transition is that such video is also compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as Android-based mobile devices and Safari and Chrome on the desktop.

The increasing trend toward H.264 has been corroborated by data released earlier this month by video encoding service Encoding.com. Two-thirds of the video encoded by the service in the first quarter of 2010 was in H.264 format, more than double the percentage encoded as H.264 a year ago.