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Facebook Is Transcoding Video For iPad

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

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."

6 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Summary Is a Bit of a Stretch ... by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.
    1. Re:Summary Is a Bit of a Stretch ... by BradleyUffner · · Score: 5, Informative

      Could somebody explain to me what the container brings?

      My understanding is that some containers bring features such as multiple audio tracks, multiple sub titles. The sound and video are stored separately inside the container (this is why sound can get out of sync sometimes, they are 2 separate streams of data playing simultaneously). Some containers like mkv can provide different auto streams for things like different languages, as well as subtitles and many many other different kinds of metadata. The container is almost like a zip archive with all the different parts living inside it with additional data storage.

  2. I wouldn't quite call it transcoding... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Were it not for Apple, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple is responsible for ALL progress in PC's. Whether it is the Intel CPU, the Windows logo, or the Linux kernel. Apple invented them all.

  4. Re:Were it not for Apple, by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Um..... please explain how Apple is responsible for the progression from floppies to hard drives, or from parallel ports to USB ports. The former seems a natural event since programs/OSes could no longer fit on floppies. The second is a result of the USB Consortium. To give Apple credit for this seems disingenuous, (especially since Apple would have preferred to kill USB in favor of Firewire).

    Simple. The iMac shipped with USB everything. No floppy disk. No legacy ports (ADB, RS232, etc). Hell, I don't think the original ones came with a CD burner!

    Back then yes you had USB. But you had two measly ports that pretty much sat empty because all the peripherals you could get were cheaper and easier to get in other connection formats. A keyboard and mouse were PS/2 because you could get both cheaply (a cheapass USB one would run you $50, a PS2 version of same for $20 or less). Printers used the parallel port. Modems either plugged into a serial port or inside your PC. And hard drives you had to install 'em yourself. You could get external Zips and Jaz drives, but unless you used SCSI, you put up with parallel ports. You transferred data via sneakernet.

    And hell, USB had been around for 3+ years and peripherals were hard to come by. They were expensive and no one wanted them. OS support was iffy, too. Windows 95 OSR2 had basic keyboard/mouse support. Windows 98 same, but you could get drivers for mass storage. Basically non-existent until Windows 2000.

    The Apple releases the iMac and gets you USB only. All of a sudden, a flood of peripherals started coming out for USB, and prices plunged. USB floppies, USB printers, keyboards and mice under $10. USB didn't mean overpriced anymore. And I scoffed at USB devices because they were overpriced - the USB versions were always much more expensive.

    And Apple did like Firewire, because well, you could stick a hard disk on it and not have ot wait all day to transfer files like USB. (Remember, the iPod used Firewire purely because USB 1.1 was pathetically slow, and USB2.0 was on the horizon but would take a few more years to become popular and standard on every PC)

  5. Pander, much? by Angst+Badger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A website implemented some UI changes to accommodate a popular mobile device. Stop the presses!

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.