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Playing Google Video on iPhone


Sure, we'd all love to watch Flash-based videos on the iPhone, but until Apple actually implements Flash in MobileSafari, everything but YouTube (with its builtin player) is off limits. Or is it? Check out this little trick, in which you can use the "Download for Video iPod" option on Google video to watch almost any video instantly.

Now, my guess is that this trick presupposes a few things, first of all that you have a network connection from the iPhone that can stream video instantly. Also, I'm not quite sure where the video itself gets stored-- is there a temp directory in MobileSafari that would store this stuff? I doubt that the video itself would get added to your iPhone's videos library, but that may be the case.

At any rate, if you've got the connection (and maybe the space) for it, this is an easy, no-jailbreak way to watch any Google videos (or any other iPod-formatted web videos, I'd guess) that offer themselves up for download.

Thanks, Kit!


Sure, we'd all love to watch Flash-based videos on the iPhone, but until Apple actually implements Flash in MobileSafari, everything but...
 

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Aleksandr Levchuk

The mp4 stream is cached in /private/var/tmp/MediaCache/

It can be found by SSHing into the iPhone and running:
find / -newerct '1 minute ago' -print

...while the move is streaming.

October 15 2007 at 1:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
michelle21

check our coming really soon app out

mooncatventures.blogspot.com

August 24 2007 at 12:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Abbie

Daily Motion is available for the iPhone.

August 17 2007 at 9:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Patron

So wouldn't work for this:
http://vixy.net/

since you can download from any site.
ONLY IF APPLE HAD COPY & PASTE!!!!!!!DAMN!!!
otherwise it be great. Imagine Dailymotion on your iPhone or Revver or Vimeo!!!

August 14 2007 at 7:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Justin

Is there really a point anymore to google video since google bought youtube?

How come they can't simply add that function to youtube? voila!

August 14 2007 at 2:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dennis

Apple has documented the limitations it imposes on serving web video.

With a little know-how and you too can be serving all your media to your phone.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html#embed_movies_in_webpages

August 13 2007 at 9:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ross

.. ive known this for quite some time.. i thought that this was already posted.. maybe a day or two after the iPhone came out..

August 13 2007 at 8:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
punkassjim

I've been wondering about this, but hadn't taken the time to check around. I figured there HAD to be a QuickTime plugin in MobileSafari. The cool thing is, it's the only video-player environment on the iPhone that'll actually let you rotate the phone. It obeys the accelerometer.

I wonder what file formats it supports. MP4 is the "no duh" format. Any others? What's the apple trailers site using?

August 13 2007 at 8:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
R Muffet

@Gordon, a few issues come to mind about Flash:

1) It is processor intensive, especially the Flash 9 implementation, which means the 600MHz processor of the iPhone would need careful optimization for it not to drop frames.

2) It would need a close relationship with Adobe to both reveal proprietary information and to optimize it the code. For iPhone 1.0, Apple wanted everything in-house.

3) Many people want Flash for video playing, for which H.264 is a better solution. H.264 gives better quality at lower bandwidth, which is the ideal situation for low bandwidth devices.

(YouTube itself is moving in an H.264 direction... As someone on the This Week in Media podcast said, they could probably save half a billion bucks a year in bandwidth, and get better quality as a result.)

4) Flash, while powerful in the right hands, is also one of the most abused web technologies around, especially for gratuitous animation sequence which do nothing but annoy anyone over the age of 10 Many sites that use Flash would be better off with good use of JavaScript.

August 13 2007 at 8:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mayank Gupta

Actually, Google Video isn't being phased out. Only their video store which allows users to actually buy TV shows and the likes (similar to iTunes) is being shutdown. Probably from lack of interest from users.

August 13 2007 at 8:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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