One would think after all these years encoding video for web playback would actually be more simple than it was in the 90′s. Sadly, it’s more complex than ever. Even though Google will be removing H.264 support in Chrome, it does still support H.264. So for now it can be used for both iOS and Android apps.

That said, there are many ways to encode H.264 video. Even if you use traditional encoding methods and stick to common tools like QuickTime 7 Pro, Adobe Media Encoder, Compressor… you will quickly notice creating one H.264 file that works in both iOS and Android is not very easy.

If you use QuickTime X and export for the iPhone – something that seems obvious – the file extension will end in .m4v which may cause playback issues in web browsers and non-iOS devices.

The solution?

Go ahead and use that Save As… iPhone option from QuickTime X. Then change the file extension to .mp4.

If you need something to help you embed the video in a webpage and help with delivering the right format to the right browser (egg Ogg to Firefox and Flash to IE8), give VideoJS a try.

Support forums are nothing new. They exist for all sorts of projects, including just about every WordPress plugin. 99.9% of the time they are “users helping users” with the occasional response from a developer.

That’s how WooThemes handled their forum, until recently. Although their official responses were fairly common, users could still help users. Now WooThemes has overhauled their backend (dashboard), along with their support forum.

Users can no longer help users.

Why? Because WooThemes saw people were often posting to resolved threads trying to get answers. This is really common on forums. In fact, many forums will ban you if you start a new thread instead of reviving a recent one on the same topic. WooThemes thinks this doesn’t work well for them. (They also mentioned sometimes posts were creating confusion.)

WooThemes has gone and done two thing in opposition to the status quo. And you know what? It’s for the better.

Better WordPress Theme Support

The reason WooThemes has done this is because they want each and every forum question to get an official response. I don’t know of a single other product support forum that does this. Not even big companies like Intel offer this sort of support.

There are quite a few companies that promise quick response times from customer support. Really those are quite pointless. Often they’re canned responses that are sent simply to get back to you quickly. My least favorite are the one that ask you information you just provided them with like “What browser are you using?” And you already told them “Chrome 15.0.874.15, extensions off, cache flushed.”

WooThemes does things differently. Their responses are always useful. Sometimes they remind users they need more info, but sometimes that’s needed. They offer simply awesome support and not only that, but now they’ve streamlined it as well.

In the end my only complaint is that I can no longer give them a hand by answering questions or help confirm issues.