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Filed under: *VIDEO* •compression •Mobile Devices •Web Video •

Encoding web video in the age of the iPhone

The last time I looked, Apple had already sold over six million iPhones after just 13 months since its initial launch. I don’t think that there have been six million extra standard computers sold (desktops and laptops) in the past year, compared to prior years’ sales. As a result, I conclude that mobile handheld communication devices [like the iPhone (plus the iPod Touch, Blackberry, Treo, and some others)] represent the fastest-growing segment of Internauts (Internet users).

Increasingly, I find myself having to warn my friends and clients against using Flash for their website and web video, since Flash is simply not playable on the most popular mobile handheld devices. (There are some handheld devices that play Flash as Adobe quickly points out, but I said “most popular”!) The formats that the popular handheld mobile devices play well are HTML, animated GIF, and H.264. Many graphic designers are so into the Flash rage, they attempt to minimize this vital and practical issue, in the hope that someday Flash might play on the most popular mobile handheld devices. I don’t know about you, but my clients and I need to communicate, sell, and eat today, not someday. We can’t afford to prevent over six million Internauts from seeing our content by making the wrong decision.

When some graphic designers and web artists hear that practical objection, they sometimes end up offering to create two versions of a website: one with 100% Flash, and one without. In an ideal world with unlimited budgets of time and money, that might be a good idea, especially if the website is going to be static (no frequent updates), not dynamic (frequent updates). For most people and organizations, keeping the website updated is very important (although difficult). It is time consuming enough to keep one version of a website up to date, let alone multiple versions. Many of the websites I manage are bilingual, which means that almost every update is already 2X. If there were also Flash/non-Flash versions, then there would be four total versions, so updates would be 4X. If a website is trilingual, then there will be six total versions, with updates being 6X. However, if you can justify the additional resources for a separate website version for mobile handheld devices… and especially if your website is blog-based (or other type of database-based website), see the sidebar “Making and maintaining a separate website version” on page 4.

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