Videos for safari on iphone.
 

Hey danielle, i love the new updates you and rob have done with your site. Well i was just wondering if you can like try to make some of your videos work on the iphones internet browser (safari). like watch videos straight from your iphones internet because the only movies/videos the iphone can play on the internet are quicktimes videos like mp4 and such. So it would be really nice if you can like format some movies to mp4 or make a mobile version of your site that is like iphone friendly lol.
Thank you so much! And i bet other iphone/ipod touch users would be greatful for this. Love you Danielle <3

Honestly I would have no idea how to go about this...though I wouldn't be opposed to the idea. You would have to ask Rob about it.

There nothing I can do about it; unfortunately since the website is windows-friendly, not mac friendly.

iPhone etc
 

Hey Rob:
Thanks for that last post. Because I am so pleased with my iPhone I was thinking about convertin everything to MAC. No way now! Could not do without my daily dose of sweet Danielle!
William

Have to admit that that is a pretty "1995" way of thinking. Actually the site itself worls perfect on a Mac, as well as the video's and webcam feeds.

The fact is that there is no "Mac friendly". There are rules and guides for making html, and if you follow those rules, the site will work in any browser, on any platform. When you start breaking the rules, more and more browsers will have problems with the site, except for IE, which opens sites anyway. While this sounds like a good thing, it actually is a very bad thing. It is also the reason why people can exploid your computer in the first place, because IE ignores the rules and opens all sites, even when the html doesn't follow the rules. So as long as you follow the rules, you don't have to worry about your users having a Mac, Linux or Windows.

The only negative I could find about FTV is the quality of the video's. Since they are in WMV format, they can look pretty horrible, especially when the image moves fast, or has a lot of detail ( like scenes at the pool ), the image quality drops dramaticly, creating lots of blocks. This is 99% the fault of WMV. It lacks the modern compression and motion estemation techniques, techniques that are present in H.264 and other modern types. This was also te biggest reason for me to cancel my membership at FTV. What's the use of 8000 kb/s FullHD video's when they have 8 by 8 pixel blocks in them half the time...?

I own a Mac and iPhone and can convert anything for anyone. However, my problem is knowing who has paid for the content (i.e. Has a membership)

I had discussed the idea of a mobile site for FTVGirls and Danielle with Rob when I saw him. I can maintain it very, very easily. I should discuss this with Rob more.

Anyone with a Mac can convert movies to play on an iPod or iPhone. QuickTime can do it, VisualHub can do it, and there are probably 5 more free apps that can do it.

What I don't understand is why most sites stil use the ancient WMV format. It's almost impossible to convert material to WMV without losing a lot of quality, while H.264 can maintain quality, even with fast moving or complex material.

For example the video from Pepper. I absolutely adore Pepper and Danielle, so the video of them in the pool was a dream come true. Until you actually look at the video, and see this:

http://www.aquaterrasdesign.nl/Fotos/pepper1.jpg

http://www.aquaterrasdesign.nl/Fotos/pepper2.jpg

That is clearly a compression problem. The motion of the water is fast, and needs a good motion estemation setting in order to keep the quality maintained, and WMV lacks good ME settings. ( Unless this already went wrong in the camera, which can happen when you shoot in the AVCHD mode ) So if you really want to deliver good quality FullHD movies, you should use a format that can give you that. Formats like H.264, which also play fine on any OS.

I think a big part of the problem is that the big company (MS) is American, and over this side we just aren't up to the same quality as you in Europe are. Look at how your TV is encoded--PAL, an efficient method with higher resolution, while our TV is encoded in NTSC with a lower resolution (I think its in the neighborhood of 100 lines less that you're used to). Why? Because American businesses weren't patient enough to let the technology develop even just a few more years--it was all about getting TVs into the market and into the homes as fast as possible. In Europe, from what I understand, the delay of just a few years allowed the companies to refine their product and so we wound up with a bunch of already obsolete TVs and broadcast system when compared to what was established in the UK, Germany, Nederlands, France and so on. Similar story for VHS v BetaMax (Beta was better quality, but VHS was produced faster). MS dominates just about everything over here, so, alas, you're somewhat stuck with what is bought by most Americans. Apple is a better product, in part because they take more time to develop & refine their product, but it is also more expensive (sometimes prohibitively so) for many Americans. Did that make sense? I guess what it all boils down to is that the market is too often impatient to get a product, release something that's not "finished" and we buy it, then we're stuck with the level of technology it can support, and where business takes the longer view and develops and refines more, where the quality goes up, you wind up stuck with something that by comparison is substandard--i.e., you get the dumbed down version that "we" think is just the bee's knees (this is in part recalled from what my grandpas told me--one worked in management for IBM, the other for Lawrence Livermore).

Thank you for explaining this, it makes much sence and allows me to understand the "problem behind my problem". :)