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Another Flash Solution...maybe.

R

Reddkryten

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 10, 2009
311
4
Hi there.

I could be way off, but I think I may have stumbled onto a way of viewing flash video on the iPad.... Kinda.

I would have assumed that others would have thought of this, but when I searched I couldn't find anything. So if this is a double post, please forgive me.

I was browsing around and accidentally clicked a link to download a video. I realises just as I clicked it that it was a flv and wouldn't play on my iPad. However my iPad did something I didn't expect, the "Open In" dialogue box popped up and gave me the option to open the video in Oplayer Hd (a media player.) I did and the video played.

The problem is this was a special case, I had a URL to download a flv file. Usually when flash videos are shown, they are embedded in a website and I never get to see the URL. If I was on a computer and I wanted to find a flash URL I would just view the page source or use the activity window in safari but I cannot find any similar feature on the iPad.

So my question is, is there any app out there that could find the URL of the videos? It feels odd I would have thought getting flash to play would have been the hard part, not getting the address, but hey this is halfway there kinda.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer and hopefully someone reading is will find it useful.
 
Hehe. I just had the same thing happen to me. Downloaded the flv on my iPad and viewed it in OPlayer. Of course, you can't play flash games or anything, but neither can you with skyfire either.

There are a few bookmarklets that will sniff the flv URL but I haven't tried any of them on iPad. Might be worth trying if you visit enough Flash video sites, but I honestly come across a Flash video only once a month these days; it's both beautiful and astounding how quickly sites have begun support of HTML5.
 
Yeah, this method is kinda like Skyfire, only a little bit better :D I actually like Skyfire, but at the moment the amount of sites it supports is kinda limited, but hey version one and all.

But yes I found one that works, http://deturl.com/. Pasted that link into Oplayer and ta-da playing flash. I haven't really explored deturl too much so I'm willing to bet it has some limitations, but so far so good.

I know what you mean about sites switching away from flash. I only come across a flash site once a week, its just that when I do run across those sites it is extremely irritating, so hey one step closer :D

PS I was able to play a video that skyfire couldn't handle, I feel good about ghat :D
 
Near perfect flash videos and games are possible using Splashtop remote over wifi via a remote desktop connection.
 
Last edited:
flash.jpg



Here's the URL: http://www.filmtotaal.nl/images/newscontent/flash.jpg

Send from my Ipad.
 
Or you could just suck it up and bite the bullet. Leave the flash sites alone and let flash die. It might hurt for a while, but you will benefit in the long run. Stop giving flash based websites traffic, and they will have to change.
 
MrWillie said:
Or you could just suck it up and bite the bullet. Leave the flash sites alone and let flash die. It might hurt for a while, but you will benefit in the long run. Stop giving flash based websites traffic, and they will have to change.
Click to expand...

Why should I care what a website uses? That has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Last week I had to check out a video for work, went to view it and couldn't play it because it was a flash file. That was a problem for me.

I didn't buy an iPad to fight flash or promote HTML5, I bought it to work on and use. When I look for a video site, the question I ask myself is does this site have the content I am looking for...asking myself what format the video files are stored in is right at the bottom of my list.

I can't imagine people refusing to watch a film because it was shot on 16mm film rather than 35mm, or refusing to read a book because of the font used. It's about the content not the delivery medium.
 
MrWillie said:
Or you could just suck it up and bite the bullet. Leave the flash sites alone and let flash die. It might hurt for a while, but you will benefit in the long run. Stop giving flash based websites traffic, and they will have to change.
Click to expand...

Actually no, flash is alive and well and not going anywhere, despite the efforts of a single company to promote their h.264 income, erm um I mean despite their completely altruistic efforts to rid the world of Flash, which has been shown to increase terrorism, global warming, and the cost of bread.

Seriously, why do people like you pop into threads like these? The OP and others are trying to help out and the stupid "just don't use Flash" anymore useless posts really get on ones nerves. If flash wasn't important you wouldn't have topics like this and you wouldn't have things like Skyfire selling out. It may not be important to you, but it's important to many including myself.

/soapbox
 
Reddkryten said:
Why should I care what a website uses? That has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Last week I had to check out a video for work, went to view it and couldn't play it because it was a flash file. That was a problem for me.

I didn't buy an iPad to fight flash or promote HTML5, I bought it to work on and use. When I look for a video site, the question I ask myself is does this site have the content I am looking for...asking myself what format the video files are stored in is right at the bottom of my list.

I can't imagine people refusing to watch a film because it was shot on 16mm film rather than 35mm, or refusing to read a book because of the font used. It's about the content not the delivery medium.
Click to expand...

spinedoc77 said:
Actually no, flash is alive and well and not going anywhere, despite the efforts of a single company to promote their h.264 income, erm um I mean despite their completely altruistic efforts to rid the world of Flash, which has been shown to increase terrorism, global warming, and the cost of bread.

Seriously, why do people like you pop into threads like these? The OP and others are trying to help out and the stupid "just don't use Flash" anymore useless posts really get on ones nerves. If flash wasn't important you wouldn't have topics like this and you wouldn't have things like Skyfire selling out. It may not be important to you, but it's important to many including myself.

/soapbox
Click to expand...


I guess y'all scour eBay looking for floppy disks huh??

I didn't purchase an iPad to fight flash either, but at the time there weren't any flash players that worked on mobile devices. I hear it's getting better, but it's still far from perfect.

Fact is, I use an iPad. If you want me on your site, then don't make it a flash mandatory site. How many millions of devices are out there that don't do flash? (Not just iOs, but Android, WinMo, ect too.)

If I only owned a 35mm projector, then no, I would not view or buy a 16mm film.

If I pick up a book, and it had a funky hard to read font, then no, I would not purchase it.

You want to deliver me content, do it on my terms. If you put out content that doesn't require flash, then you can reach EVERYONE.

Oh, and I don't use flash on my laptop or workstation either.
 
MrWillie said:
You want to deliver me content, do it on my terms. If you put out content that doesn't require flash, then you can reach EVERYONE.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you, now could you please email that to Newnham College, Cambridge University and BBC news :D those were the sites with flash videos I had to access last week.
 
MrWillie said:
I guess y'all scour eBay looking for floppy disks huh??

I didn't purchase an iPad to fight flash either, but at the time there weren't any flash players that worked on mobile devices. I hear it's getting better, but it's still far from perfect.

Fact is, I use an iPad. If you want me on your site, then don't make it a flash mandatory site. How many millions of devices are out there that don't do flash? (Not just iOs, but Android, WinMo, ect too.)

If I only owned a 35mm projector, then no, I would not view or buy a 16mm film.

If I pick up a book, and it had a funky hard to read font, then no, I would not purchase it.

You want to deliver me content, do it on my terms. If you put out content that doesn't require flash, then you can reach EVERYONE.

Oh, and I don't use flash on my laptop or workstation either.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, BUT there are a LOT of users who use flash on a daily basis, and the fact is that the majority of them don't really know or care that it is Flash or another format, they just want it to work. They won't necessarily boycott a particular site they are frequently on just because it uses a format that the majority of the world uses only because a single tech company told them it was evil.

There are quite a few sites I visit which are necessary for my continuing education which are Flash only and would be impossible professionally for me to boycott, even if I wanted to, but they have not given me any kind of issues ever. Additionally most of the sites I visit recreationally invariably have at least a couple of flash news articles/videos, more often they have several, and this disrputs my enjoyment of those sites.

It's not a black and white issue at all, even less so than Apple tries to make it seem. It's not so simple to just ignore Flash, even if we wanted to ignore it, which you will find the majority of users just want it to work.
 
MrWillie said:
Or you could just suck it up and bite the bullet. Leave the flash sites alone and let flash die. It might hurt for a while, but you will benefit in the long run. Stop giving flash based websites traffic, and they will have to change.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%. Flash has to have periodic updates, plus it runs updaters in the background taking up task processing on a PC. I prefer HTML5 because it is just what it is. If a site is flash on my iPad, well... I just move on and grin knowing Steve is slowly choking it into submission. :)
 
Reddkryten said:
I totally agree with you, now could you please email that to Newnham College, Cambridge University and BBC news :D those were the sites with flash videos I had to access last week.
Click to expand...

BBC news, there's an app for that. The two universities, did YOU email them and let them know?

spinedoc77 said:
Fair enough, BUT there are a LOT of users who use flash on a daily basis, and the fact is that the majority of them don't really know or care that it is Flash or another format, they just want it to work. They won't necessarily boycott a particular site they are frequently on just because it uses a format that the majority of the world uses only because a single tech company told them it was evil.

There are quite a few sites I visit which are necessary for my continuing education which are Flash only and would be impossible professionally for me to boycott, even if I wanted to, but they have not given me any kind of issues ever. Additionally most of the sites I visit recreationally invariably have at least a couple of flash news articles/videos, more often they have several, and this disrputs my enjoyment of those sites.

It's not a black and white issue at all, even less so than Apple tries to make it seem. It's not so simple to just ignore Flash, even if we wanted to ignore it, which you will find the majority of users just want it to work.
Click to expand...

I feel for you. I really do. I bought my daughter a MB for college. The school said they had support people on staff for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and others. Her first math class required registration for an online website (another $70 or so out of my pocket) that, get this, used active x. So she went to the computer lab at school, they don't allow active x. I had to enable it on my Windows machine. It was a bit of a hassle for her to make the drive, but we did get to spend more time together.
 
MrWillie said:
The two universities, did YOU email them and let them know?
Click to expand...

Why would I email them? I have no interest in flash or HTML5, I don't refuse to goto flash sites :D

I understand what you are saying, its just I dont expect an entire university to change their media format to suit me. Even if they do, it won't happen overnight.

I used to work with video tapes (god that takes me back) in different formats from different countries, stuff in NTSC or SECAM. It would have been impossible for those companies to change their entire workflow to accommodate me.

Regardless, if I can figure out a way to extract the flv URL, then I won't have a problem, I can just watch the footage in OPlayer, problem solved :cool:
 
kirchnrd said:
Agreed 100%. Flash has to have periodic updates, plus it runs updaters in the background taking up task processing on a PC. I prefer HTML5 because it is just what it is. If a site is flash on my iPad, well... I just move on and grin knowing Steve is slowly choking it into submission. :)
Click to expand...

That's the amusing, if not sad part. He's not choking anything into submission. Android is even advertising itself as tje "full" Internet experience, sometimes even directly referring to flash. Winmo already said it will support flash, although it might already support it, so has blackberry and I'm sure whatever palm develops into will also support it. Apple is the lone company on their crusade to switch the world to pay to license h.264, oh I mean to rid the world of the evils of flash.

Sad part is the blindly loyal followers who repeat the exaggerated hype of flash causing hardware issues.
 
Reddkryten said:
Why should I care what a website uses? That has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Last week I had to check out a video for work, went to view it and couldn't play it because it was a flash file. That was a problem for me.

I didn't buy an iPad to fight flash or promote HTML5, I bought it to work on and use. When I look for a video site, the question I ask myself is does this site have the content I am looking for...asking myself what format the video files are stored in is right at the bottom of my list.

I can't imagine people refusing to watch a film because it was shot on 16mm film rather than 35mm, or refusing to read a book because of the font used. It's about the content not the delivery medium.
Click to expand...

Best Macrumors post ever, you sir are a man amongst ants.
 
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