Comments on: Browse, Search, Play

By: Connor

Connor — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:29:08 +0000

Is it possible to rate the movies from within Tubular? I think it would be cool if it were possible to rate movies like it is possible to rate songs in iTunes. That way, the ratings you give could be sent to YouTube (just like you can rate movies on YouTube currently), but you could also have a list of your best/worst selections. That sounds more confusing than it really is, trust me!

I think using Perian is a good idea. Perhaps you could talk to the folks who design Perian and see if you can bundle it with Tubular? That seems to be a win/win situation and it gives you a lot more functionality with the flash videos.

Finally, a couple of questions:
1. Do you allow for full-screen mode a la iTunes and Quicktime?
2. Is it possible to save the movies to your Mac without converting to iPod? How does that work?
3. Is it possible to search for all movies by a certain user?

Looks promising so far!…

By: Paul H

Paul H — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 14:04:36 +0000

Steve … will there be any way to access the comments on a video? Ideally I’d love to see it in a bottom frame the way Mail displays messages in the bottom with the index at the top (double clicking on the border makes the frame go away, or dragging resizes). Failing that it would be perfectly fine to simply have a link to click to see the comments (sort of how FireANT has a link to the comments on any Video).

By: Steve Streza

Steve Streza — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:55:10 +0000

Helga: There will be. I disabled it for my own sanity so I didn’t have to worry about changing something while I was writing the app.

Si: Thanks for your consideration. We’re all human; I just didn’t fully think the last part of the post through before writing it.

By: Si Brindley

Si Brindley — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:07:42 +0000

Steve: Thanks for your considered reply to my slightly harsh comments

By: Helga

Helga — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:29:29 +0000

Will there be a little white jellybean in the top right corner to hide the top toolbar? It seems to be absent from your screenshots. I have it in almost all my Aqua applications and use it frequently to gain screen real-estate and change toolbar options.

By: Steve Streza

Steve Streza — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 05:07:47 +0000

Geeky details alert!

YouTube stores its files in FLV format (Flash Video). Adobe doesn’t allow 3rd parties to license the file format specification for playback - only for creating content. So, my options are to reverse engineer the FLV format, which is a huge undertaking, or to try and use ffmpeg (which is handling the iPod conversion) to decode the video in real time, which is much less of an undertaking but still difficult.

One option I’m considering is to check to see if a user has the Perian QuickTime codec is installed (which supports FLVs). If it is, load the video with QuickTime. Otherwise, fall back to the YouTube player. I can’t distribute Perian with Tubular because that would be a GPL violation.

By: Cougar

Cougar — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 04:49:06 +0000

Sure, I’d love to hear the details. Despite it being a lot of work, I think that it will go a long way in making interacting with YouTube as pleasant as using iTunes. With the way it looks now, I probably wouldn’t have preordered.

By: Steve Streza

Steve Streza — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:41:21 +0000

When the original article was written, I intended to try and get some native Aqua controls. Shortly afterward, YouTube changed their Flash player graphics to something significantly better, and it was decided that, for the time being, it was good enough. We wanted to get a release out as quickly as possible that had the core functionality. Adding standard Aqua controls is, sadly, a lot of work.

However, if it’s a significant enough issue for you guys, it will be addressed. I can also give geekier details on some other reasons why it hasn’t happened so far, if you want to hear them.

Si, I hadn’t thought about your last point until you brought it up, but you’re right. I’ll rewrite it so it doesn’t sound like I’m leeching YouTube’s features.

By: Si Brindley

Si Brindley — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:16:05 +0000

First poster (Cougar) commented with my sentiments exactly. I don’t want to go as far as to say that I pre-paid for this app because I believed the video controls would be replaced, etc. But, to be fair, we *were* told it was intended to be a feature. I guess it turned out to be too hard to implement?

While I’m here ranting…you say this: “Scrubbing through the movie is as easy to do as it is in QuickTime or in your web browser[...]But, if you watch the video through to the end……you can see videos related to the one you just saw.”

These are YouTube features. But you’re telling us about them as though they are features of Tubular. It’s all rather transparent

By: Noah

Noah — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:02:39 +0000

The “Most” lists are good for finding out what the users at large are interested in, but Subscriptions are the only thing that immediately represent what I as a YouTube user am *always* interested in. Tubular would be smart to support My Subscriptions as one of the “channels”!