-
f4v H264 on Apple’s iOS devices?
WHilst I appreciate this is kinda an iPhone question, it applies to all mobile devices which cant play flash, but you other editors may know of something Im missing. Basically, H264 is obviously like the “optimal” codec for use on an iOS device, and works in m4v, MP4 and MOV wrappers. Is there any way, therefore, that an H264 wrapped F4v which has been uploaded to a website be streamed on an iOS device without downloading and changing extension/ re-encoding. I normally this idea is absurd, but was only wondering because the codec is H264…..?
Cheers!😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.ukSony Z5, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 2.93GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD5750 [1GB GDDR5], 2TB Int. SATA with 2TB External HDD; (FW800), with Elgato Turbo H264HD. -
8 Replies
-
Not as far as I’m aware – it’s still flash. I don’t even think you could easily get it out of the FLV wrapper. The whole reason youtube had to rencode everything above 360 is to get it in a non-flash format.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer
Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC
Avid & Color Videos Vasst.com
Compressor Essentials Lynda.com -
If the website is built in flash, iDevices won’t be able to see it.
You need an HTML website.
-
Actually, yes you can.
F4V is no different from QuickTime-wrapped H.264.
That is, you can transcode once to QuickTime H.264, and both the HTML5 version or QuickTime version, plus the Flash player, can point to the same video source file.
You still need to code the web page so that the video is presented using HTML5/QuickTime embed for the iOS devices, and HTML5 or Flash for others. But the point is that both embedding methods can link to the same H.264 video file.
-
But not a flv or f4v, right? Has to be a mov or a m4v or mp4? Which of those can be embedded in a swf?
-
Yep, flash can use a H.264 QuickTime .mov file with AAC audio, just like Apple iOS devices use.
If you rename it to .f4v I don’t think Apple iOS devices will even try to play it, so stick with .mov.
Here’s an example. On this page, the English QuickTime and Flash players point to the exact same movie file (cpcdemo.mov). That way you only have to transcode & upload the video once.
https://cpcweb.com/webcasts/webcast_samples.htm
Jason Livingston
CPC Closed Captioning -
[Jason Livingston] “That way you only have to transcode & upload the video once.”
Exactly, but the page itself is HTML.
I can see the QT stuff on the iPhone, but not the ‘flash’ pointers. It says I need flash, which of course, I can’t get on an iPhone.
-
I think we are back to the same point of yesterday’s thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1118575#1118622
The web site would need a player able to run documents with all those extensions.
Adobe and Apple always trying to make things easy for customers.
rafael -
What ties it together is a little piece of JavaScript code that checks the user agent string (which tells you what browser/device is visiting the page), and then embeds the HTML5 version for Apple iOS devices, and Flash for everything else. (You can get more fancy if you want… default to HTML5 and fallback to Flash, etc.)
There are even some Flash player skins that do this automatically, like JW Player can default to Flash but fall back to HTML5 or vice versa.
Again, the main points are:
1) You use the exact same video file for both: A QuickTime H.264 .mov file. This works in Flash too. No need to upload the video twice or change any file extensions.2) You don’t need separate HTML pages either, just a bit of code to change the embedded player type.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up