H264 instead of Flash?

[Alphy]

Quick question. Do you think there is absolutely any chance that Apple could have maybe included on-the-fly re-encoding of Flash video to H264 for more prominent flash video sites; NYTimes, YouTube, etc.

I don't know how either of these technologies work (i.e., I'm completely ignorant) so this is pure speculation without any knowledge of the underlying technologies.

Admittedly, this would be very neat if it was in any way possible. Would circumvent the whole lack of Flash, which is a deal-breaker for me.

 

[AHDuke99]

Quick question. Do you think there is absolutely any chance that Apple could have maybe included on-the-fly re-encoding of Flash video to H264 for more prominent flash video sites; NYTimes, YouTube, etc.

I don't know how either of these technologies work (i.e., I'm completely ignorant) so this is pure speculation without any knowledge of the underlying technologies.

Admittedly, this would be very neat if it was in any way possible. Would circumvent the whole lack of Flash, which is a deal-breaker for me.

considering this phone will be lacking features my razr currently has, 3G, AIM, MMS, java ...

i may wait to see initial reactions before i take the plunge. i doubt apple has any way to make up for the lack of flash. is it even official? i thought it hasnt been confirmed... but if its true .. it'll suck.

 

[darwen]

on the fly conversion is kinda unrealistic. Conversion usually takes some time. H264 is also really processor intensive compression, I doubt the iphone can handle it.

On top of that, what you are talking about is FLV files, not SWF. Flash files can use external flash compressed video files. It is hypothetically possible that apple is working on some way to automatically re encode FLV movies and show them in quicktime instead. It is not likely this will be on the iPhone though, due to processing power. Even if this was done, not all flash video would work. Ads for example dont really ever touch FLV files. The only Flash files that have FLV components are ones with real video in them, and even then... they may not be using FLV (it is my understanding that FLV is fairly new).

 

[darwen]

considering this phone will be lacking features my razr currently has, 3G, AIM, MMS, java ...

i may wait to see initial reactions before i take the plunge. i doubt apple has any way to make up for the lack of flash. is it even official? i thought it hasnt been confirmed... but if its true .. it'll suck.

Yes. The post on mac rumors claimed it to be official and then arn said again on the board that it sounds pretty certain.

 

[neven]

Quick question. Do you think there is absolutely any chance that Apple could have maybe included on-the-fly re-encoding of Flash video to H264 for more prominent flash video sites; NYTimes, YouTube, etc.

I don't know how either of these technologies work (i.e., I'm completely ignorant) so this is pure speculation without any knowledge of the underlying technologies.

Admittedly, this would be very neat if it was in any way possible. Would circumvent the whole lack of Flash, which is a deal-breaker for me.

It's possible (though not necessarily practical) with Flash video, but it wouldn't solve the problem of interactive Flash.

I wonder how Adobe feel about all this.

 

[nfreader]

Apple has apparently coerced YouTube into encoding their video as H.264 [Link] for the Apple TV. I have a feeling that that was done more for the iPhone than the Apple TV. Hrm...

 

[Me1000]

Apple has apparently coerced YouTube into encoding their video as H.264 [Link] for the Apple TV. I have a feeling that that was done more for the iPhone than the Apple TV. Hrm...

coerced?
LMAO!

Jobs probably went into the next room where Eric Schmidt was, and said, "We need all YouTube video's in H.264". "Schmidt said whatever..."
and it was done!