One of the most frustrating things about the iPhone is that it can’t handle Flash, which has become the standard for streaming video on the web. YouTube managed to work around this by transcoding all of its videos into the H.264 format, but other video serving sites have failed to follow suit. Today Episodic, a video web publishing company, has launched a new web app that looks to solve this problem by converting Flash-based videos into a format that the iPhone can play in its native Safari browser. The service works with content uploaded to a number of different video sites, including Blip, YouTube, and Metacafe.
The site takes standard RSS feeds and scans posts for any video content, which it then converts to an iPhone-friendly format. Each blog’s converted feed can be accessed from a static URL (for example, you can check out a feed of WebbAlert at http://iphone.episodic.com/WebbAlert from your iPhone). Hypothetically, a video blogger could redirect to this static Episodic URL whenever an iPhone user visited their site.
While the video conversion seems to work well, Episodic’s app is still very limited. There’s currently no way to take a standard URL and convert that page’s content to video - you need to generate a playlist using an RSS feed. Some bloggers may also take issue with the fact that videos are now being hosted outside of their site (anyone can submit your site’s RSS feed for conversion). CEO Noam Lovinsky says that this shouldn’t be an issue, as the site is merely serving as a syndication platform, and will do everything it can to respect bloggers’ wishes.
Episodic is also hoping to help bloggers monetize their video content by offering an advertising and analytics service for streamed videos. Unfortunately there’s currently no way to authenticate who owns the videos - you could easily input an RSS feed and then start monetizing someone else’s content. Lovinsky says that the site is working on this issue, and that the company’s ultimate goal is “to help people get paid for the content they create”. In the future, the site intends to roll out a full-fledged video platform designed to help serial video creators generate professional content quickly.
The question is, can they build something useful fast enough to leverage the whole analytics / advertising angle BEFORE Apple / Adobe announce native Flash support?
And when IS native Flash support coming, anyway? I really need to watch Hulu on my iPhone
“And when IS native Flash support coming, anyway?”
I wouldn’t doubt (or be surprised) if the answer is never.
Apple will give in on this… eventually. But only when they really have to which won’t be for a couple years perhaps. Flash is so pervasive and ubiquitous there will come a day when the iPhone will look silly to not have it, when every other smartphone and computer has it. But there is no pressure on apple to give in for a long time.
It looks to me like somebody really likes Morgan Webb.
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Chris,
None of us are fooled…no doubt your latest “enterprise” is just you lashing out because no one would cover SiteSpaces or whatever other shitty web venture you were shilling. Please go away.
sounds useful, for iPhone users.. http://blabtech.blogspot.com
I think the title of this post is completely misleading. The iPhone is just one of the platforms they target.
Yeah this app is offering quite a bit more then just iPhone web-cast videos.
It looks like they are building a full platform to launch, monitor and monetize a web cast show.
I see how this would be useful to video producers and something people would actually pay money to use, which is saying something compared to a lot of these ad-supported businesses covered.
but what happened to the Adobe’s flash support for iPhone. They announced successful testing of such an app built via iPhone SDK?? but didnt see that in the App store yet?? Did Apple block it??
Besides all the politics and issues that apple has with adobe and flash, the iPhone processor is just not powerful enough to run it. It can’t even handle javascript/ajax animations. We won’t see Flash on an iPhone until the processor gets at least 50-75% faster. 2010? maybe, who knows, maybe longer.
My question is what rights do they have around the content that they are now syndicating. In the case of WebbAlert, they already output in flash video (http://media.webbalert.com/video/16887/webbalert_2008-07-13-042417.flv), mpeg4 (http://media.webbalert.com/video/16887/webbalert_2008-07-13-042417.mp4) and h.264 (http://media.webbalert.com/video/16887/webbalert_2008-07-13-042417.m4v). All three include ad insertion via Federated Media as well as analytics. So…what does Episodic provide in addition to this and how do both Federated Media and WebbAlert benefit from this?
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The company has broader ambitions than converting video for iPhone streaming but this seems to me like a very useful tool, and a savvy way to kick-start a video content management company. Looking good guys! (Full disclosure: I’ve worked with members of the founding team.)
They are not the first to do this. Mippin has been able to convert Flash movies for iPhone since the beginning of the year. Also Mippin works with every other phone too not just the iPhone and can even convert iPhone only movies so they run on other phones too.
Flash is bloat-ware of the worst kind and is killing the internet! I certainly hope that “the Jobs” doesn’t allow it on the iPhone!
Episodic sounds good for delivering video content for those people that have been blinded by the “flash”.
Pip-pip — the economics of flash longterm are unrealistic.