So you want to add iPhone compatible videos to your website?  Delivering videos to an iPhone isn't as mysterious as you may think.  Just follow a couple guidelines and you'll be fine.

You may have noticed some really cool apps for video delivery to the iPhone.  You could develop one of those if you want.  All they really are is an app which wraps the iPhone video player (QuickTime) in a nice package and then plays an MPEG-4, H.264, MOV or 3GP video file.  It's sort of like a web site which lets you choose videos all packaged in an iPhone app!

But doesn't YouTube deliver videos to the iPhone and isn't YouTube all Flash/FLV?

The reason you are seeing YouTube videos on the iPhone is because with the launch of the iPhone YouTube started delivering some content in H.264 MPEG-4 format.   You notice on YouTube now they have the HD button?  When you click that you are watching an H.264 version of that file which IS compatible with the iPhone.  That's why not ALL YouTube videos are viewable on the iPhone.

You simply need to re-encode your video in a certain format to be viewable on the iPhone.  You can acomplish this in many ways.  Use an encoder like Sorensen Squeeze.  Use a service like Encoding.com.  Use the latest version of QuickTime Pro which will let you Export to Web.  Or use an number of free or shareware software packages out there.  Keep in mind you get what you pay for, so the free and cheap stuff probably won't produce as good of a product as the professional strength apps.

I found this nice encoder for both Mac and PC. - The Videora iPhone Converter If you can get past all the advertiesements in the application, it's a pretty nice and easy to use product.

Here is a video I encoded using the product.  I followed iPhone standards:

• Resolution: 480x320
• Bit Rate: 56, 128, 768  (depending on how the iPhone will connect to the Internet
• FPS - 15 or 30
• Output as H.264

Keep in mind for larger files you will probably want to stream the file, not do an HTTP Progressive download.  Although Flash Media Server (FMS) will stream H.264 files, you can't playback an RTMP (Flash) stream on an iPhone.  You can stream to an iPhone using a Darwin Steaming Server (QuickTime)

For more infomation on the differences between Streaming and Progressive download, click here

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to post them here and I will respond.  As always I ask that you support our sponsors.

Thanks,

Mike Colburn (DigitalMediaGuy)