Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

divergentmedia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–37 of 37 posts

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#31

Post by jackalope »

Aissen wrote: post #25

So Apple dug a hole by: - not allowing iOS to play videos in-DOM. - deciding not to support WebM, so Firefox users can't see their videos. And now others are following them by helping to dig deeper in a vastly inefficient way of displaying moving images ? What could previously be offloaded to dedicated engines is now going to burn the CPU via JS. Hum, now that's gonna work…

I viewed three examples simultaneously from the Phosphor gallery at http://www.divergentmedia.com/phosphor/gallery and each one only used about 5% CPU, for 15% total. I closed them and viewed a YouTube HTML5 video (no Flash on this machine) and it consistently used 70% CPU. It seems the Phosphor approach is more lightweight than video and it was entirely smooth (on a 2007 dual core MacBook Pro running a 64-bit Linux). If you don't need audio and want to include a video or presentation in your page that doesn't require a plugin and looks to be supported on a wide range of browsers and platforms, this looks like a compelling option.

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#32

Post by exodust »

jackalope wrote: post #31
Aissen wrote: post #25

So Apple dug a hole by: - not allowing iOS to play videos in-DOM. - deciding not to support WebM, so Firefox users can't see their videos. And now others are following them by helping to dig deeper in a vastly inefficient way of displaying moving images ? What could previously be offloaded to dedicated engines is now going to burn the CPU via JS. Hum, now that's gonna work…

I viewed three examples simultaneously from the Phosphor gallery at http://www.divergentmedia.com/phosphor/gallery and each one only used about 5% CPU, for 15% total. I closed them and viewed a YouTube HTML5 video (no Flash on this machine) and it consistently used 70% CPU. It seems the Phosphor approach is more lightweight than video and it was entirely smooth (on a 2007 dual core MacBook Pro running a 64-bit Linux)…

The image frames in those examples are 250 x 250. There's no sound. It's video deconstructed into frames then those frames animated to re-form a second-rate appearance of the original video.

I can't believe it's not butter!

Funnily enough it's Flash which is the best performer out of those he lists. Attempting to mask and layer video in HTML5 is a painful scrapheap of half-baked canvas hacking and browser compatibility woes. And then it doesn't work very well anyway even when you finally get the canvas to kick in. Flash eats that kind of thing for breakfast, with easy alpha channels on video layers and so on.

I wish Flash would just make a comeback, improve itself as a mobile plugin for browsers, and we can all enjoy rights-restricted video playback in the browser (at least), and clever next gen web games without paying Apple 30%.

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#33

Post by lloeki »

Aissen wrote: post #25

So Apple dug a hole by: - not allowing iOS to play videos in-DOM. - deciding not to support WebM, so Firefox users can't see their videos. And now others are following them by helping to dig deeper in a vastly inefficient way of displaying moving images ? What could previously be offloaded to dedicated engines is now going to burn the CPU via JS. Hum, now that's gonna work…

> a vastly inefficient way of displaying moving images ?

I don't see this as a MP4/WebM replacement (compared to which it is effectively inefficient) but a GIF replacement (plus it's scriptable and hackable in a number of interesting ways). I wish it were a real, self-contained file format, but APNG completely failed to displace GIF.

It's a hack, but it solves a real problem and it opens a venue for something less hackish.

Also, it's simple enough any developer can understand the algorithm, there's no patent looming over, no complex codec infrastructure (however layered away), and it's using only HTML/CSS/JS.

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#34

Post by dergachev »

This is really cool!

But often you can't upload videos or javascript, but only a GIF, like on a github.com's README file.

For that scenario, I recently wrote up a quick tutorial on how to use Quicktime + FFmpeg + gifsice to easily create a short screencast and convert it into a GIF.

https://gist.github.com/4627207

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#35

Post by Terretta »

kmfrk wrote: post #28

HTML 5 video: iOS devices won't play video tags in the DOM, they instead open in a standardized player. Apple also stops them from auto-playing on iPhone. This is what makes Vine so useless on iOS outside of the native app. It makes it preferable to use GIF sans audio generally, whenever it's an option. I get where Apple is coming from, but this is definitely sorely needed for some use cases.

It's not "iOS devices". It's the default browser, Safari.

If you use, say, iCab, HTML5 video stays embedded in the page -- to a fault. Often you won't be able to full screen the video, you end up having to zoom the page.

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#36

Post by kmfrk »

Terretta wrote: post #35
kmfrk wrote: post #28

HTML 5 video: iOS devices won't play video tags in the DOM, they instead open in a standardized player. Apple also stops them from auto-playing on iPhone. This is what makes Vine so useless on iOS outside of the native app. It makes it preferable to use GIF sans audio generally, whenever it's an option. I get where Apple is coming from, but this is definitely sorely needed for some use cases.

It's not "iOS devices". It's the default browser, Safari. If you use, say, iCab, HTML5 video stays embedded in the page -- to a fault. Often you won't be able to full screen the video, you end up having to zoom the page.

True. I use Opera on desktop, so I should know to use the distinction. I just hate the browser alternatives on iOS so much I repressed them. :)

Re: Show HN: Forget Flash, Skip GIF, Control iOS

#37

Post by mikewoodworth »

motdiem wrote: post #26

This looks great - And fits perfectly into a need I had at the moment for sharing smaller screencasts. I had a few crashes with it this morning on a rMBP, what's the best route for support ? (your forums do not seem updated yet for phosphor)

You can email us at support@divergentmedia.com. We've found one crash and are prepping a fix to submit to the MAS, but we can email you a new build if you get in touch.
Post reply on HN