# What is Interactive Video?

Interactive video adds controls or timed elements that let viewers choose paths, select objects, navigate branches, or trigger actions during playback. Those inputs can alter the content, sequence, or application state.

Video + audio tracks

Video processing

Playable derivative

Video processing decodes timed tracks, transforms them, and encodes a deliverable for a target player. This diagram shows video broadly, not specifically Interactive Video.

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## How Interactive Video works

An interactive presentation usually separates the encoded audio-video essence from a timed model of hotspots, questions, and navigation rules. A player listens for media-time cues, renders an accessible overlay, and maps viewer input to seeks, alternate assets, or application events. Authoring therefore spans editorial branching, UI state, and media packaging rather than codec work alone. Delivery pipelines also need a noninteractive rendition or deterministic default path for clients that lack the runtime.

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## Key facts

1. 1HTML media elements expose playback and timed-track primitives, but they do not define a portable branching graph; application code or a player SDK supplies that behavior.
2. 2Clickable regions should be stored in normalized media coordinates and transformed with the displayed video, or letterboxing and responsive resizing will misalign targets.
3. 3Branch analytics need stable node, choice, and playback-session identifiers; a simple completion event cannot distinguish abandonment from a deliberate early branch.

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## When Interactive Video matters

Teams use interactive video for branching training, product exploration, advertising, education, or entertainment. They must define fallback behavior for players that cannot execute the interactive layer.

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## Common use cases for video

These examples cover video broadly, not specifically Interactive Video.

* Preparing uploaded video for web, mobile, connected-TV, social, or editorial playback.
* Creating clips, thumbnails, captions, alternate aspect ratios, and adaptive renditions.
* Normalizing camera, screen-recording, and user-generated files into predictable outputs.

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## Working with video

This guidance covers video broadly, not just Interactive Video.

A demuxer separates tracks from the container, decoders turn compressed streams into frames or samples, and filters apply spatial or temporal changes. Encoders compress the transformed tracks before a muxer writes the chosen output container.

Video compatibility is the product of codec, container, profile, level, frame rate, color, audio, and subtitles. Validate the complete output on target devices because a playable file on one decoder may fail or look different on another.

### What you gain

* Standardized derivatives make diverse source files playable on target devices.
* A retained master can feed many resolutions, aspect ratios, codecs, and channels.
* Automated inspection and transformation make large upload volumes consistent.

### What it costs

* More efficient codecs can lower bitrate at similar quality but usually cost more compute and may have narrower support.
* Higher resolutions and frame rates preserve more detail and motion while increasing processing and delivery requirements.
* Fast encoding settings improve throughput but can produce larger files or lower quality than slower analysis.

### Before production

1. 1Inspect codec, container, dimensions, frame rate, color, audio, and subtitle tracks.
2. 2Test visual quality and playback support across the slowest and oldest target devices.
3. 3Preserve a suitable master before applying lossy, destructive, or delivery-specific changes.

[← Inter-Frame Compression](/glossary/inter-frame-compression.md)[Interlaced GIF →](/glossary/interlaced-gif.md)

More in video

* [HDR](/glossary/hdr.md)
* [IDR Frame](/glossary/idr-frame.md)
* [Inter-Frame Compression](/glossary/inter-frame-compression.md)
* [Interlaced Video](/glossary/interlaced-video.md)
* [Interstitial Video](/glossary/interstitial-video.md)
* [Inverse Telecine](/glossary/inverse-telecine.md)

[All 505 terms](/glossary.md)

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