Vtap to play videos on the Iphone and Itouch

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Today whilst surfing through the webapps I found one that’s great for what I do, share video content via the web. I found Vtap, a video sharing website that allows you to search through, select and stream videos straight through to your iphone or Ipod touch without either converting it to an ipod compatible format or using the youtube website.

For certain videos it gave me a feedreader rather than playing the videos but for those that are already indexed it works well. It’s definitely worth a try and it’s a taste of the future.

Similar Posts

| |

Socialthing aggregating several websites at once.

Byrichard

I’m active on more social networks than I have time to go through in a day and that’s where Socialthing comes in. It allows me to follow news from facebook, twitter, pownce, tumblr, flickr, vimeo and livejournal. What I like about this site is how easy it is to see everything that goes on.

Whereas friendfeed is nothing more than a few lines of text this version of a social feed aggregator is the visual aspect. At a glance I can see which social network is giving the content and I can post accordingly. If I see a status update on facebook for example I can view the profile and add a comment. There’s that option with twitter too. I can see everyone’s tweet and I can reply to any friend’s post quickly and easily.

As a positive sidenote I can follow what’s going on on pownce without logging in. I’ve often felt that the limitations of that site is the lack of people outside of California using it. At least this way I may find my interest growing.

If I’m in a rush or there’s an important message to get out I can simply select to “post” a message to all these social networks at once. That saves a lot of time although as expected this should not be used too frequently as it adds a lot of “noise”. I’m looking forward to more services being included

|

Interbine – Free your Mobile video – delivery via Wifi…

Byrichard

is an automated service that grabs videos from RSS feeds and converts them to 3gpp for easy download to the N95 and other mobile phones running the s60 OS. There are a number of default shows including MobuzzTV, Zefrank, National Geographic, DiggNation, Rocketboom and a number of other well known shows.

In the right hand column you have another four methods of accessing content, searching, browsing according to keywords, highest rated or what’s new. The second option is to browse through the directories they have selected to find the categories that are closest to your particular interests.

The final element is add a channel. If I wanted to I could take the RSS feed for the videos I have produced and create a channel to share with others with tags and more. The Personal feed is like a channel but for private use. The search feed works according to tags placed by other people in their videos. If you want video content about a music festival or event in a town by where you live then add those search terms and when video content appears it will be fed straight to your phone. Add youtube feed and video clip are self explanatory.

The website does not limit itself to the feeds that they have selected. With their firefox extension you may go to the youtube content of your choice and create channels of your choice. They appear in your account on the Interbine website.

Over the AIR (OTA) deliver

Once all the shows you want have been selected and the interbine application is selected you have a number of methods for downloading content over the air (OTA). These are WIFI, via the phone carrier and bluetooth. The option I have tested most extensively is Wifi. Once you’re in the application you have the option to sync all the video data you have selected and it will come to your phone for later viewing.

Since this is a mobile device there are a number of settings that are relevant, especially if you choose to get data via the carrier. These are how much space to allocate on the phone, how much data transfer you want to allow per month and how long the data will stay on your phone.

The Player

The application has a built in player that allows you to view the content per channel and then per video, allows for resuming, and syncing of the media for viewing. So far though I have had one minor inconvenience. I can’t get sound to work. I had the same problem with the youtube player so i don’t mind. (Turns out that problem was due to the warnings being off on the sound profile. That has since been fixed and it works fine) The work around has been to use the media gallery, play the content once and delete it once viewed.

What I like

What I like about this service is that it makes video content retrieval and viewing a far smoother experience than before. It may take some time to set up but once everything set according to your preferences everything else is automatic. Once you get back from work you open the application, sync your content and the next morning as you commute you’ve got a choice of video content to watch.

A continued Interest in 360 Videos
|

A continued Interest in 360 Videos

Byrichard

A few weeks ago I was at the Geneva International Film Festival in Geneva as a volunteer so I got to play and experience new 360 experiences and some of these were interested because we could move around in space whilst others were interesting because of their length.


A few years ago people thought that 15-20 minutes was long for content but during the GIFF it became apparent that content is now 30 or more minutes long so another wall has come down. People can now experience immersive VR Goggle experiences for extended periods of time and this opens quite a few new doors.


It also changed how I see 360 videos. If a film festival can present immersive video experiences that last half an hour to people coming off the street then the quality of the experience has progressed. It means that 360 video content, and people who want to view it are jumping into the mainstream.


Yesterday I was at a film rehearsal and brought an old 360 camera to film. You can see the director directing the actors, the lights and more as an immersive experience. This morning I watched, to see how it felt and it was good.


Today I experimented with a 5.7K 360 video device and the image quality is much nicer than with previous devices I used. I feel that we are finally getting to see interesting image quality.


One of the reasons I had cooled down to 360 videos is that I had tried a few options and been filled with hope only to have it dashed at playback in VR goggles. Today this issue is resolved. Cameras provide us with the quality that we want and expect.

Nyon in Spring

Byrichard

This text will be replaced

Today I went down to the Nyon Lakeside to play with the camera to try it out. I watched the video playback and it looked fine. I saw some pixelation between a girl’s face and her hair when she was walking and some artefacts just around the people’s bodies as they move. That’s at 1440*1020, not full resolution. I’ll have to find time to do test at full HD quality during my days off.

Please note that for monitoring I was using a 40″ Sony Bravia and standing a few centimeters away. From a few meters back it looked fine.

Videos in Nyon

|

On trying to unblock the i-pod touch.

Byrichard

Today I tried to unblock the ipod touch and it froze the first time and started to heat up and the second time the screen went to black. I thought on two occasions that my ipod was bricked. I’ve been able to re-install everything and am now syncing the content back onto the device.

For the first attempt the device was plugged into the computer and whilst I did see the install app on the screen the display would stop responding. Whether this is due to weak wifi or an incompatibility I’m not sure.

On the second attempt the hack didn’t work and went so far as for the display to cease working. I tried re-starting it with the button and nothing changed. As I plugged it back into the laptop it detected that something was happening and so I was able to restore the ipod.

In summary I’m not going to try that again with my own ipod. I’ll wait until February when they’ll allow third party apps to be included.

| | |

Sharing Videos With Facebook

Byrichard

Through technology such as that available on Facebook, video sharing has become quite a bit easier. Whereas on a website like youtube where you share video footage with the world on Facebook you select who you share your videos with.

There are three settings, share with everyone on your network, including all friends, share with everyone who is tagged in the videos and their friends, or simply restrict it to your friends. I particularly like the option to share between your friends and the friends of tagged friends because it’s so flexible. we don’t have the same friends so it’s a good method by which to distribute videos, best of all it’s free.

Another feature that’s interesting is key frames. You can cycle through up to ten screenshots of your video and find the frame you feel is best suited to illustrate the video. It’s as easy to select a frame as to when you’re sharing a website with your network.

I have run into a number of limitations. The video must be under ten minutes in duration and 200 megabytes in size. Keep in mind that the video will be converted to the FLV format which can be read on almost all browsers.

I’ve uploaded seven videos already and so far the interface has behaved well. I managed to upload a 50+ megabyte video but due to its length being too long the software complained. I also tried to upload an iPod format video and it complained as well so that’s something I think they should work on.

It’s not going to replace the broadcast machine interface I’ve installed on my website but it’s a good method by which to share amateur videos between friends and for those who would like to do it professionally to showcase some of their better work.

Two additional video options are uploading by mobile phone and recording from your webcam. The recording from webcam is a feature that’s interesting if you’re in a public place with your laptop and you’re uploading video of specific events. I’ll try uploading video from the mobile phone at a future date.

As I see it this is yet another strong feature that has been added to Facebook and unlike the fortune cookies, I like software and others this is something that helps promote the imagined and real communities I discussed in a recent essay. (That essay will be uploaded once it’s been moderated properly).

I’m going to take some time to convert and upload quite a few more videos to Facebook over the coming weeks and months.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.