Streaming for Smartphones & Tablets

[ccvid]

We have been using flash video for 2 to 3 years to stream our church services (not live). Everything seems well, except every once in a while someone needs to install Adobe Flash.

Now I'm working on making the website accessible to android and apple smartphones and tablets. Some versions of android work fine with our website, but Apple devices won't take flash.

So, what other video format would be the best, end all, one solution answer? I tried .mov files but they have to completely download on firefox before beginning to play. .3gp was the same way. Should I just ignore Apple for now and hope that one day soon they accept flash?

There is another way, though I haven't tested it yet. Smokescreen is supposed to be an app for apple devices to make flash play (as a java applet). They say it's slow though. I don't have an apple device to try it out.

All this came about because I was going to make a church app. After messing with Google's android program for a day, I decided to focus on mobile versions of the website. When that is done I'll try to see if I can make an app that is just a shortcut to the church's website...

So, any suggestions on the format for streaming video?

Thanks!

Ben

church website: fwcbranson.com
mobile website...type the same address and (depending on your device) it will take you to either iphone.fwcbranson.com, pda.fwcbranson.com, imode.fwcbranson.com, or wap.fwcbranson.com.

[prochlea]

HTML5 is the standard video streaming solution that works on Apple iOS devices

[ccvid]

Well, that's not as easy as it could be. I found a program at http://mediaelementjs.com that will do both the html5 or flash if html5 isn't supported. Sounds very good, but it looks like I need to make a plugin because I use Joomla.

[petereit]

We have found it easiest to upload our media to Vimeo.com. They have an option that automatically creates a mobile-device version of any video you upload and it works very well. Also nice to have all of our video hosted/archived off-site so we don't need to worry about server storage, backups or bandwidth.

[ccvid]

Originally Posted by petereit

We have found it easiest to upload our media to Vimeo.com. They have an option that automatically creates a mobile-device version of any video you upload and it works very well.

That's interesting. Do you then stream the Vimeo video to your church website? Are there any consequences to Vimeo... i.e. on Youtube at the end of the video a list of links to other videos pops up, and you don't have control over what they are.

[jonack]

With a very cheap ($60/year) membership to vimeo.com you can make it do almost whatever you want. The downside is that you can't "stream" to Vimeo live and have it record. You would need to record your services to a file (.mov works best in the H.264 codec at 5000 kbps). Then upload to vimeo. With the paid membership it automatically can encode to a mobile version and you get 5gb of upload per week. We use it for ministry previews of videos, videos that go in our services and any kind of updates that the Pastor might want to do that would go out in an email, facebook or twitter update.

I highly recommend Vimeo and they are friendly to churches! Check it out!

Jon

[petereit]

Originally Posted by ccvid

That's interesting. Do you then stream the Vimeo video to your church website? Are there any consequences to Vimeo... i.e. on Youtube at the end of the video a list of links to other videos pops up, and you don't have control over what they are.

Once you have uploaded your video to Vimeo, you can download the embed code to embed the video into your own web site. You can see what it looks like on the media page on our web site.

The videos play within our site and nothing comes up at the end of the video, like it does on YouTube. Also, there's essentially no time limit to the videos -- only an upload size limit. I HIGHLY recommend subscribing to Vimeo+. Considering that you have essentially unlimited archival space and 5GB/week upload, it's CHEAP!!