When the iPhone was unveiled, the mobile phone market was instantly changed. Consumers raced to buy them, and sales exceeded all expectation. The iPhone now dominates the mobile phone market. But what does this mean for mobile streaming?

Unfortunately, the current version of the iPhone does not support 3rd generation phone features such as higher data transfer rates that allow true streaming video to be viewed on compatible mobile phones. The good news is that a 3G version of the iPhone is in development, and is supposed to be available sometime in 2008. But for now, the iPhone is a device that downloads video only. If you want a viewer to see your video on their iPhone, they have to download it from their computer and load it onto the iPhone through iTunes.

If you do want to encode video for the iPhone, here are the requirements:

1) Codec must be MPEG-4 or H.264
2) Resolution can be up to 720×480 (but its actual display resolution is 480×320)
3) Frame-rate: 24fps

That’s it!

Recently, GravityLab Multimedia made the switch to a new billing and support system. The new member center is available at http://members.gravlab.com/. From our member center, you can view your invoices, change your billing information, change your password, and more. Following are instructions on logging in.

1. Go to http://members.gravlab.com/
2. Enter your e-mail address for the login name
3. Your password should be the same as the password you use to upload files
4. Use the menu bar to navigate the different features.
5. When you are finished, log out

And as always, if you have any additional questions about our new billing system, contact support@gravlab.com

For those whose businesses rely on the Internet to produce revenue the latest Google update, nicknamed Jagger, was one of the biggest events in the past couple years (probably since the Florida Update of 2003). With this 3-part update Google has essentially changed many of the rules and have thrown the SEO community for a loop.

In this update there are a few key areas that have impacted the way sites rank and how an SEO (or a business owner optimizing their own site) needs to approach and address the various components. The key areas that have been affected with this update are:

• The history of your web pages
• The way backlinks are counted
• Site content & structure

GravityLab Multimedia offers several mobile video hosting plans, and many of our customers ask how they can create .3gp video files in order to stream the video to 3rd generation cell phones.

For this tutorial you will need a short clip of uncompressed video, including audio. You will also need Apple QuickTime Pro. You can buy a QuickTime Pro serial directly from Apple. Entering the serial number into the QuickTime player activates additional features in the software, including the ability to encode video to a variety of formats. See the “Buy QuickTime Pro…” option under the QuickTime player’s Help menu.
Once it is installed and running:

1. Load the uncompressed video clip using the player File > Open File… menu option.

2. Click on the File > Export… menu option.

3. Under the Export option choose “Movie to MPEG-4″, then click on the “Options…” button beside the Export drop down menu. (If your cell phone only plays .3gp video files, choose the 3G menu option instead of the MPEG-4 option.)

The key options are “File Format” and “Image Size.”

4. Choose MP4(ISMA) as the file format option. Although you probably will not know if your mobile phone is ISMA (a standards organization) compliant, try encoding with this option. If your device fails to play the file, try encoding with plain vanilla MP4.

5. Set the image size to the video resolution of your cell phone. If you choose the wrong size, your video may play and you will hear sound but it will have no image.

6. Select the Audio codec by clicking on the drop down menu at the top of the screen and choosing “Audio.”

7. Set the audio options to the following:

8. Upload the file to your cell phone and try to play it.

If your phone chokes on the video file, load the uncompressed file back into QuickTime Pro and try different settings to optimize the file size of the video.

Darwin Streaming Server (DSS) is the open source version of Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Server technology that allows you to send streaming media to clients across the Internet using the industry standard RTP and RTSP protocols. Based on the same code base as QuickTime Streaming Server, Darwin Streaming Server provides a high level of customizability and runs on a variety of platforms allowing you to manipulate the code to fit your needs. Although Darwin Streaming Server does not offer as many professional features as QuickTime Streaming Server, it still retains its capacity to broadcast streaming video. Although there are other free alternatives, DSS was the first free RTP/RSTP server to arise, and it also integrates impressively well with everything Apple. As long as you have a quick internet connection, you will be able to deliver a completely professional real time stream to as many users as you want.

Typically, in any given streaming setup, there are two computers. One is the server, which requires either DSS or QTSS, and the other is the broadcaster, which requires Quicktime Broadcaster (Mac OS X only). The server can be either Windows or Mac, but the broadcaster must be a mac. For more detailed instructions on installing DSS on a Windows machine, follow these instructions. For Mac users, continue following these instructions:

1. Download DSS
2. Download QuickTime Broadcaster
3. Make sure you have Apache Web Server installed.
4. Obtain the URL from QuickTime Broadcaster.
5. Post it on a website on your Apache Web Server.

The installation is a breeze, and there is virtually no configuration whatsoever. You might only want to open a couple of ports, and then you’ll manage everything from QuickTime Broadcaster. You’ll be able to stream from your webcam, or just transmit a file from your HDD.

That’s it. In no time, you’ll be using the same solution that YouTube Mobile uses to transfer videos in 3GP.