Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Is Transcoding Video For iPad
Stoobalou sounds another death knell for Flash video. He says "Another heavy user of Adobe's video streaming software Flash is now pandering to the all-powerful iPad. Everybody's favourite waste of time, social notworking monster Facebook, is now streaming user videos to Apple's second coming of the portable computer with no sign of Flash in sight."
"Death gong?" "No sign of Flash in sight?" I don't quite see how this news equates to any such hyperbole.
I just checked videos my friend put of me drunk out of my mind "singing" karaoke Killers songs (no, I will not provide a link) and sure enough they're in Flash player 10 through my Firefox browser. Since it's allegedly transcoding this real time from Flash to MP4 when it detects the mobile Safari browser, I would claim that Flash is not only very much in sight but it is the default encoding on Facebook -- keeping it very much alive. At least that's what I gather from my experience in my browser.
The decision to keep Flash off of some Apple mobile products was Apple's decision and Apple's alone. Do you think Facebook enjoys this overhead transcoding cost of its videos? I highly doubt it. I think this is a case of Facebook trying to building a unified cross platform experience for users (and I don't often speak kindly of Facebook) not their agreement to obsolete Flash video. I impatiently await HTML5 and more open video and audio codecs in all senses of the word 'open.'
My work here is dung.
we would still be using floppy disks and parallel ports. Even if you don't like their products, or don't recognize this as progress, I see no reason to be so snide about it.
The Flash video used on Facebook is already H.264 video and AAC audio, just in a FLV container. All they really need to do with these is remux everything. I'm assuming they'll just remux into an MP4 or MOV container.
So you don't like Facebook. We get it. But would it have been so hard to write an unbiased summary? Some of us use Facebook and we a) actually don't mind it so much, and b) wouldn't really call it a "waste of time". Even if it does break sometimes :-)
Thanks, I'll be here all night, try the shrimp.
Puzzle Daze is now my job
I just have to laugh at "the all-powerful iPad"
LMAO!
it takes Facebook, Apple & Google.
MAYBE. Don't hold your breath.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
What's up with this nasty summary? "Social notworking site"? I have no interest in Facebook, but why do we get these unprofessional summaries in this news aggregator? Oh right. Slashdot. Never mind.
A link to the original source would have been infinitely more appropriate.
The whole hype about the fucking iPad. And about Flash. And about Facebook. C'mon. Get a life, cmdrTaco !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I can see this sort of solution work for HTML5 as well. Letting servers transcode video files will result in all users on all platforms having access to all video content, without the need for a default codec that everyone can agree upon. It will require massive computing power, but there are already services which provide this functionality, like Bits on the Run.
Of course it would be a lot nicer if we could agree upon a codec, but I don't see it actually happening though.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
The last couple of days one in three summaries seems to contain some rather cheap sniping at either Apple or Facebook. News for Nerds indeed. Well, it tends to create flamestorms which surely are good for page hits and ad revenue.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
then I'll start to believe that Flash might die.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
All it takes for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing.
Why should they transcode the video? I mean the flash plugin already play h264, and MP4 also contains use so no need to transcode. It is simply a case of serving the files directly to the browser, instead of having a flash plugin reading the file. (Been there, done that there is no reason to transcode anything)
This article summary is full of flamebait language. I could start getting into the flamewar but honestly I'd just rather point it out.
By the way, I find it amusing that everyone thinks Flash is God's child now. I thought we all hated flash? Isn't HTML 5 better?
I tried to make a flash-free site with video and audio and gave up because of Apple's own Safari is not ready for HTML5. It preloads all HTML5 audio/video on a page, regardless of the tag's autobuffer/preload settings. Easiest way to break an iPad is to load a page with 30+ HTML5 audio/video tags on it, and watch it try to load hundreds of MBs of content at once. Facebook might get around that with JavaScript or something, but even then, Safari still often plays audio at the wrong frequency.
A website implemented some UI changes to accommodate a popular mobile device. Stop the presses!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
But I can not believe it is just for the iPad. OK it may sell well but overall it must be more of the iPad having a problem not being able to play video from Facebook than the other way around.
There will be more reasons behind it. The iPhone would be more reasonable already (many more sold). Or maybe Facebook themselves want to get rid of Flash but don't want to say it directly?
All and all it's a great excuse. The iPad is high in the minds of many people, so it's easy to ride the wave and to "blame the iPad" in order to dump Flash.
Slashdot hasn't been Taco's site for some time now. He's solely trolling for page hits for his superior's ad revenue.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
They moved to H.264. This codec is not owned by Apple and Apple has nothing directly to do with it. Therefore the this drivel is just about recoding for Apple is a sham. SWF is less supported than H.264 in devices that actually play video (hardware based). So the title should read "Facebook changes to H.264, supporting video devices around the world instead of SWF, a mostly web based video format." Before you try and contesting anything I have written try researching a bit, to see how many video players (hand held, DVD/Blueray disk players,etc) around the world play SWF and now compare the devices with H.264?
Why is Facebook's technique not called HTML5? I guess they're not serving it up to everybody, but when they detect an iPad, are they purposely avoiding the video tag and using the object tag instead?
Just ask Eve or her witless companion, Adam.
USB everything. No keyboard port, no mouse port. No serial ports. No slots. No floppy drive. It didn't even have Firewire, which Apple invented!
It just had USB, ethernet and audio out.
So suddenly peripheral makers started actually making USB peripherals. Serial ports, keyboards, floppy drives, mice, printers and a lot more.
Meanwhile over on the PC, PCs had USB but you didn't actually use it for anything. USB mice and keyboards didn't even work correctly in Windows 95 or 2000 (the keyboard didn't start working until late in boot so if you had a problem that required you to hit a key to type a path to find a driver you couldn't do it). Printers came after a while (parallel port connectors must have been expensive), widespread adoption of mice came a lot later and keyboards a long time after that.
Intel did invent USB, but its use on PCs was limited until after Apple had jumped in with both feet on the Mac side.
Apple was huge in pushing the floppy drive out the door, but it was really the USB memory stick that killed it if you ask me.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I hope the iPad is trumped by Notion Ink's Adam tablet (due in June I think). 16+ hours of battery full HD...Android. Sounds like a winner...
then I'll start to believe that Flash might die.
Time to start believing!
OK, yeah, it's not definitive, just speculation...
Devices that can play H.264: a boatload.
Devices that can play SWF: half a handful.
Bloody hell, who elected Apple the leader of the technology world? You have a company that dictates what it is customers can and can't use on their systems for it is own ends. And I have no idea why a sane and knowledgeable person would put up with this BS, let alone praise it. Let me decide what I can and can't use.
Maybe learn the basic rules of English and someone will explain it sometime.
Or maybe you can start by explaining precisely how Apple "dictates" what I can and can't do with my Macbook "for its own ends".
As someone who uses debian GNU/Linux on powerPC architecture (no Flash support from Adobe) my online experience will be much better if fewer websites used Flash. Good riddance, I say.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
At least they're not using Real Media. Some Stanford lectures are in .rm format, probably because that seemed like a good idea back in 1998. Since Real Player is generally considered malware, I don't want to install it, and am slowly running lectures through a transcoder into .MP4 format.
PC user: "I bought me a PC and Microthing Office but I just don't have me enough money to buy me a printer".
This is actually exactly true; Having had a conversation with a couple slashdot editors, they are pretty quick to criticize, stereotype and "mock" the slashdot userbase, and are pretty disengaged overall (little leadership from above, etc.) Taco, etc. are absolutely milking it for ad revenue until someone pulls the plug. Impressions overall are way down, too.
It seems most of the users who are left are equally checked out (read comments on here from a few years ago -- so much more literate), but there are still so many people here who take this shit so very seriously. It's kind of embarrassing.
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/21/its-coming-farmville-heading-to-iphone-and-ipad/
Ring Ring.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Why aren't they serving these up to the iPhone in the Facebook app? I just looked at a Facebook video in the Facebook app on my iPhone 3GS and I still get the, "Sorry, Facebook Video is not yet..." dialog. In the ipod-centric facebook web page, the videos don't show up at all. I mean they aren't even listed, so I can't test them out there. Finally I switched to the full Facebook web page, and there, finally, I could see the videos. I suppose I just need to be patient, and use the full Facebook page for the time being. And actually I now notice that the full Facebook page works much better in mobile Safari - you use to get this annoying bar that would end up in the middle of the page. That's gone now. So yeah for that!
--- What?
Facebook is transcoding for everyone, not just iPad users. Well, for everyone except Adobe.
I still hate Facebook, though. ;-)
Everybody's favourite waste of time...
Speak for yourself, Stoobalou.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
This news from Facebook is good to hear. I had noticed both YouTube and Facebook slowly making the switch AWAY from Flash. While Facebook may not appear to be using HTML5, the way their movies are implemented on the iPad will lead to an easier transition. Flash can go away now. Adobe DOES NOT need to be hurt by this. If they would make their Flash creation IDE compatible with HTML5 they could do many of the cool things they can now, but in an open format! On a related note, they could make Dreamweaver the best dang Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress theming engine in the world, but alas, they are closed minded and myopic. I have little sympathy for them if they choose not to do this and instead choose to complain and whine. Apple and Google are at least trying to use some open standards where Adobe is locked into the Flash model. This model can change, BUT only if Adobe wants it to. In the end, the world will move forward WITH or WITHOUT Adobe.
I know, right? Slashdot? More like SlashNOT!
Apple forces technology to conform itself to humans
(rolling my eyes)
are you kidding? Apple is not "forcing" technology to do anything. They designed a pretty decent phone, but the iPhone is not the be-all-end-all of smart-phone technology. There was a point when the features of the iPhone made it somewhat unique. That moment has passed. Now it is one of a handful of well-designed phones that all do, essentially, the same thing.
Apple's brilliance is in marketing. They are able to market their products in such a way as to convince people, like you, that they have some magical powers that other companies don't have. The iPhone is still coasting on its reputation. The iPad is well on its way to doing the same thing (although the niche it fills is infinitesimal).
Exhibit A is this whole conversation. Apple has been able to spin the fact that its products are inferior (they don't play flash) into some kind of asset. FYI iPhone users really do want to watch video on their devices, just like they do on a regular computer. That the iPhone can't is a design flaw and a weakness of the phone. It's explicitly forcing users to conform to technology.
You want to watch video on a site that doesn't do special encoding for you phone? Apple says "Too f-ing bad. You don't need that anyway."
You want to run apps in the background? Apple says "Too f-ing bad. You don't need that anyway."
You want an app for hardcore pornography? Apple says "Too f-ing bad. You don't need that anyway."
just three examples off the top of my head of Apple technology forcing users to conform to their technology.
It's like car enthusiasts telling everyone that they must drive sticks because they are more powerful and more in line with the nature of the technology
This analogy makes me think you're missing the point. If the iPhone were a car, you wouldn't be allowed to open the hood, change your own oil, pump your own gas, or change the tires. you wouldn't be allowed to drive to certain places and you could only use your car for pre-approved purposes. independent mechanics would be forbidden to touch the car, etc...
so this is like a car enthusiast telling everyone to not buy that car with all those restrictions because when you buy something, you should have control over what you can do with it.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
...he's still a little bitter about the fallout from that whole "Nomad" comment a few years back. ;-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Because Slashdot is about "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters", and Apple matters tremendously, and because obviously those interested in hearing about Apple outnumber those who don't (and if you don't, I'm sure you can figure out how to use Slashdot's user settings to not show stories related to Apple).
I'm continually baffled by the vocal hatred of a small minority of Slashdot users (and they are a small minority, albeit the loudest), particularly since many of them claim that they don't use Apple's products or services, therefore Apple is irrelevant to them. Rubbish. If Apple were truly irrelevant to them they wouldn't be wasting their time actively seeking out and participating in discussions about Apple.
I'm an atheist, and religion is of no relevance to me, so I could care less what other people want to believe. Then there are the anti-religious atheists, notably Richard Dawkins, to whom religion is something to be actively, vigorously, and dogmatically opposed: "We are right and you are wrong, and we have a duty to save you from yourselves, because we're smarter than you and know what's best for you." The Apple-haters remind me of this group, particularly the Linux zealots. These are the people to whom Linux is the One True Way, and all others, Windows, Mac, BSD, whatever, are objects of scorn and derision. These are the people who espouse freedom of choice, but Cthulu help you if you don't choose what they do, then you're treated like some sort of heretic.
I've only ever used a Mac,and I first started reading Slashdot because I'm interested in the experiences of users of other platforms, particularly Linux, about which I knew nothing, and for the most part it used to be quite enlightening, and entertaining, having civilized discussions with grownups. My take is that I'm here to learn new things and exchange ideas with intriguing people, not to stand on a soapbox and shit all over other people's opinions. But now the signal-to-noise ratio has gotten much worse, with the loudmouth zealots spewing invective everywhere because reality (the bastard!), has the nerve to contradict their worldview.
There also seems to be component of jealousy among some Linux zealots. They root for the underdog in their fight against "The Man", but they'll turn on them like hyenas if they become too successful. All of a sudden Google is evil, and Apple is the Great Satan, because these companies are no longer underdogs, and the average user still couldn't care less about Linux or FOSS.
And then there's the iPad hate. Hoo boy... I knew a guy in college, very bright, somewhat reserved and shy, but generally likable and well-liked. He was hopelessly in love with a really nice girl who was only vaguely aware of his existence. He had only ever exchanged greetings and a few pleasantries with her, but as far as he was concered, she was The One, and it was mildly amusing to see him mooning over her, doodling her name in lectures etc. Then came the fateful day he saw her holding hands and making cow's eyes with another guy. It's like his head exploded or something. Whereas before she was his angel sent from Heaven Itself, all of a sudden he was badmouthing her as a whore and worse to anyone who would listen. He rapidly became extremely unpleasant to be around, and the poor girl was flabbergasted that anyone would slander her so viciously and unrelentingly. She wasn't interested in him, so he made it his life's mission to ensure that no one would be interested in her (it stopped when her new boyfirend, whom she later married, got incensed and punched his lights out one day).
When the iPad was released and some tech commentators lost their shit over it *cough Cory Doctorow cough* the emotionalism evoked strong memories of the entire sorry affair, not least because many of
Facebook transcodes nearly all video that people upload. They save it as h.264 video, and for typical users that's simply wrapped in Flash for delivery. In the case of the iPad, it is merely consuming the same video stream directly. They aren't re-encoding anything, they are just using the HTML5 video tag instead of embedding a Flash player (which displays the streamed video).
As far as Facebook is concerned, it's a no-brainer. They get video on the iPad with nothing more than a few lines of JavaScript.
5% is a lot of money if the market is $2bn. This is another online fallacy - small percentages = small returns.
I read the average Google ad CTR is 1%. Small number, or big number?
Since when does Apple lock you out of the web? Because they refuse to allow some buggy proprietary closed protocol from some third party vendor to lower the value of their device by sucking the battery life and crashing it every four seconds? Because they are using their influence to push for the adoption of open standards like HTML5?
You honestly believe the only advantage of an Iphone 3GS over the latest Android brick is "marketing".
You should seriously consider the possibility that you are just a screaming moron.
It turns out, however, that Facebook is not using HTML5 at all. The company told ReadWriteWeb that, "All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we're playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos. It will load them full-screen, similar to what it does for YouTube videos."
I don't think that the iPad, using Safari, supports native "h264 format" [sic], seeing as how AFAIK h.264 is just a stream of data.
So rather than using HTML5, Facebook is actually detecting that the iPad's Safari browser is in the mix, and is transcoding the original video format to MP4 on the fly.
Transcoding? It doesn't appear they're transcoding anything. It sounds like they're taking a video (pre) encoded as an h.264 stream, slapping an MP4 container around it, and throwing that file at Safari. Safari knows how to deal with the container and the video codec, and plays it back.
Write. Better. Articles! This is almost as bad as the article that tried to claim that HTML5 was a video format.
What I find especially interesting is that a social networking site like Facebook is willing to provide raw video files to iPad uses without wrapping any kind of player or anything else around them. This allows the iPad users to download the files directly, providing an easy method of liberating content from Facebook. I'm not really sure why Facebook would allow users to "escape" like this.
coding is life
But that was a pretty influential 5%, even if I made a lot of fun of them at a time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The title of the article is wrong. It's only transcoding if you're moving from one codec to another. Repackaging existing H.264 video streams in mp4 containers (instead of flv containers) would be called remuxing. Second of all, Flash Player has been able to play H.264 video in an MP4 container for several years now. Anybody with an ounce of sense making a video site would do well to create their videos in that fashion. It gives maximum compatibility with Flash Player, iPhones, iPads, etc. Now with the HTML5 video tag, browsers that support H.264 in MP4 (right now: Chrome, Safari but notably NOT Firefox) don't need to use a flash-based video player component.
no longer working for cnet
so someone doesn't support a media format, how strange, flash is nice, but it ain't the end of the world. And yet there seems to be no issue with other people not supporting Apple compression schemes, which is native to the largest selling brand of personal media players. And no, I don't have an iPad, and yes I use 3 different OS's on a daily basis, not an Apple fanboy.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
The company must have money to burn for such a niche market. With the current economy as it is, there's no way a larger company is going to dedicate resources to something that provides little return.
The biggest site on the Web moves from proprietary video playback that only works on Mac and PC to W3C and ISO standards that work universally, and that's "pandering to iPad"?
This update also makes video available on all ARM systems, none of which have FlashPlayer, including other tablets, all smartphones and media players, game consoles, and set-top boxes. It makes the video require a small fraction of the CPU power and battery life on every device. It moves the player code from a proprietary API in a binary to an open API in interpreted code anyone can read. It means the video from consumer cameras doesn't have to be transcoded.
It's weird that the open Web is now some kind of controversial Apple thing.
Farmville is massively profitable. You have no idea. Also, the iPad may be a small market but the application purchase rate is absurd, and iPad owners are generally willing to pay a premium price. $10 iPad versions of $3 phone games are selling fantastically.
The company must have money to burn for such a niche market.
30+ million devices is far beyond "niche".
That's just iPhones, there are a lot of iPod Touches around at this point too. And (sadly) Farmville for the iPad would probably sell a TON of 3G iPads.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What, do you work in HR.
I would rather see this included commentary, than some stale press release.
In general, we here hate facebook because of the incredibly compromises to privacy they are making perfectly acceptable to the majority of the population. DNA logins can not be far behind.