Web-based video on the iPhone sans Flash
Brightcove isn’t waiting around for Flash to be supported on the iPhone. They’ve recently published an article in the help section of their web site which illustrates how easy it is to build web applications targeted for the iPhone using Brightcove’s Media API, without any server side code.
http://help.brightcove.com/developer/samples/iPhone/iPhone-portal.cfm
This sample application highlights a couple interest points regarding the iPhone and Brightcove:
- Just because the iPhone doesn’t currently support Flash doesn’t mean that you can’t deliver high quality video via web applications. Brightcove’s sample iPhone web application simply loads an h.264 encoded QuickTime into the iPhone browser which can be played through the iPhone’s built-in QuickTime video player. No Flash needed.
- With some fairly basic JavaScript, you can achieve functionality in a web application similar to native applications with support for clean and “touchable” menus, and orientation (portrait vs. landscape) detection
- Brightcove’s RESTful Media API provides a flexible way to incorporate videos published through their platform, without requiring a Flash video player
