Posts Tagged ‘ipad’

Do we need 64 kb/s video in 2010?

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

Techcrunch reports today that Justin.tv was required by Apple to provide 64 kb/s versions of all its live streams in order to gain approval for the app store.  We have been battling with this over at Orca Digital for a few months now – and it’s extremely frustrating.

Apple has started rejecting all live streaming apps unless they provide adaptive bit rate streams (ie. the quality of the stream is optimised for the available network conditions).  In itself, that’s reasonable – and ensures a great user experience – however the requirement to provide a 64 kb/s video stream is not appropriate in today’s world.  For those of you who know anything about video, you will know that quality at 64 kb/s is ropey – certainly not in line with the user expectations of an iPhone.

We have appealed hard against this, but Apple is not giving in.  We believe that it’s better to get no video than a 64 kb/s stream, but Apple is adamant that streaming works on EDGE networks – rather than just 3G.

The other challenge is that many live encoders won’t stoop to 64 kb/s – requiring the purchase of new (expensive) live encoders unless you really know your video salt.  It has driven us to develop our own mobile optimised encoders – which we’re now using to power live streams.

Apple continues to keep us on our toes – are they going to insist on 64 kb/s video for the larger screened iPad?  It would look truly shocking…

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iPhone/iPad – where’s the video calling?

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Apple iPadPrior to the unveiling of every new Apple device there is immense speculation about its features – Microsoft, Nokia and even Google must sit back in helpless awe and jealously watch the hype surrounding each announcement.  Steve Jobs is a marketing genius.

Few features have been more anticipated than video calling – it is expected in every device launch and never arrives.  It was rumoured back in 2008 in the original iPhone 3G, then the 3GS, then the iPad and iPhone OS 3.2 now apparently has hooks to allow for video calling.  But no devices have a front facing camera so that’s not much use.  Yet.

Third parties such as Fring offer video calling support on a variety of devices (now including the iPhone), though they have a long way to go on usability / quality (our tests showed it to be unusable on Nokia devices).

Video calling has not been the success that 3G networks hoped for – most 3G handsets and networks support video calling over a 64kb/s circuit (quality is moderate) – but today’s IP networks can handle higher bandwidth and higher quality.  Given Apple’s relentless pursuit of control, user experience and quality they’ve probably been waiting for the networks to catch up.  Which many have now.

What the market really needs is Apple to jump onto it – and provide a compelling user experience.  This will doubtless be via iChat – but third party apps are also likely to gain access to forthcoming front facing cameras through the SDK.

Given this week’s OS 3.2 announcements, what’s the betting that our next iPhone will have a front-facing camera?  It’s exciting – and will see mobile video calling finally hitting the mainstream.

Update 21.02.2010: Mashable is reporting even more evidence that video chat is on its way to the iPhone + iPad – it looks like it’s definitely more than rumour now!

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