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!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-13-2007 @ 6:18PM
Gordon Werner said...
is the omission of Flash support on the iPhone a technical issue? or what? seems like a pretty stupid thing for apple not to have implemented at launch
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 6:22PM
KeynoteKen said...
It's probably cached locally like any other video you display. Since the "download" is merely a link to the .mp4 file, the iPhone doesn't have to do anything special to display it.
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 6:32PM
Andrew Banchich said...
Yeah, you can also watch trailers for movies from apple's site on the iPhone.
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 7:45PM
EternityInBlack said...
/sigh It's not like this is going to matter in the long run. Google is phasing out their Google video service in the next few weeks.
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 7:58PM
Reg Muffet said...
I always liked Google Video because of its clean and uncluttered interface, and .mp4 downloading.
Sad in a way that everyone gravitated to the "MySpace of video" YouTube instead. I guess that's just the nature of Web 2.0 - can be as ugly as you like as long as it offers comments and ego links.
RIP, Google Video.
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 8:07PM
Mayank said...
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.
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 8:09PM
adam said...
any tips? Whenever I browse to video.google.com and pick a video it tries to load it in youtube and then fails
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 8:10PM
Reg Muffet said...
@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.
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 8:46PM
punkassjim said...
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?
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 8:53PM
ross said...
.. ive known this for quite some time.. i thought that this was already posted.. maybe a day or two after the iPhone came out..
Reply
8-13-2007 @ 9:43PM
Harbinger said...
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
Reply
8-14-2007 @ 2:05AM
Justin said...
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!
Reply
8-14-2007 @ 8:00PM
Quinn said...
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!!!
Reply
8-19-2007 @ 11:42PM
Abbie said...
Daily Motion is available for the iPhone.
Reply
8-24-2007 @ 12:14AM
michelle said...
check our coming really soon app out
mooncatventures.blogspot.com
Reply
10-15-2007 @ 1:45AM
Aleksandr Levchuk said...
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.
Reply