[iOS App] Giant Bomb Video Buddy

In iOS 8, I don't see an in-app icon for Airplay. I have to activate it from the Command Center. As such, other apps can often cause problems and change what my iPhone is sending. Not sure what's causing this, but it happened on both the iPhone 5 and 6.

feature request: I bought an iPhone 6, and with it's bigger screen, I'm watching more GBvb on both my phone and my ipad. any chance you could use icloud to sync video position between devices?

thanks!

@lebkin: It's currently unclear to me if that's the intended behavior or a bug, but it appears to be a wide-spread, OS-level issue. So far I've kept my devices on iOS7 for development reasons, so I can't easily confirm this myself, but I'm seeing reports of the same behavior in Apple's own apps like Mobile Safari.

@dvydra: Progress syncing is definitely on my radar, but it's not something I'm actively working on at the moment.

While this thread is bumped high, which means that I remember, I just wanted to post my thanks for this. A lot of the longer series like Metal Gear Scanlon I've stopped watching on my PC and have been keeping to enjoy on my iPad later. Thanks for putting all this work into the App, I use it quite literally every day :)

I made a donation awhile back. Great app and its super convenient. Thanks duder!

Hi @soup_menu, some of the most recent content (6810 the Moon, Fenix Rage & Demo Derby) is not showing in "latest" unless I toggle "Hide Trailers", and not in their respective sections at all.

Weird?

@dvydra: This is a known issue, but unfortunately it's not one I can easily solve on my end. Every so often a video will get entered into the database without a category and when that happens it won't show up in the expected places (if you open the Quick Looks page on the site you'll notice 6810 the Moon & Fenix Rage are absent there as well). It doesn't happen particularly frequently and, when it does, it's usually caught pretty quickly. If you do spot some missing videos, the best thing to do would probably be to let someone from GB know. I'm not sure what the preferred way to do that would be, but my first guess would be the Bug Reporting forum.

Any plans to support Chromecast on iOS?

@zidd: Actually, the latest version does support Chromecast. I haven't had a chance to test with iOS 8 yet, but at least under iOS 7 if other apps on your phone can see the Chromecast dongle then GBVB should too. It can take a few seconds after the app resumes, but it should find the receiver if it's on and connected to the same WiFi network.

How come you're not developing in iOS 8?

I tested GBVB on iOS 8 during the beta period to make sure the wheels weren't going to fall off, but I haven't had the time to really put it through its paces since the gold master hit. I work on the app in my off hours and, unfortunately, for the last little while I haven't had very many of them. I've been doing my best to keep up with the forum threads, but proper development is taking a back seat for the time being.

@soup_menu: Awesome.

I checked the first post but not the app store link to see if it was in there.

Hey,

Long time user of the app, really love it. Lately I've been getting really slow speeds on it. The video constantly stops to buffer, even if I set the quality all the way down to mobile (that's the lowest, right?). It doesn't seem to happen if I play the video through Safari on the website, on the same device. I'm guessing this isn't really an issue with the app itself, but do you have any ideas?

Thanks,

Dan

@orfbc: Unfortunately, I don't have any particular suggestions here. It seems like it's probably more of a network issue, so hopefully it will clear up on its own, but if you're looking for things to try, rebooting your device or uninstalling and reinstalling have been known to fix odd issues now and again.

When you're on the detail page of a video, the universal "swipe from edge to go back" gesture introduced in iOS 7 doesn't go back to the list view, it just opens the hamburger menu. Any chance that will change? After getting used to it working in most apps, it's really jarring when it's absent.

@cbirdsong: I don't have any specific plans to change that at the moment, but I can certainly keep the feedback in mind.

Hi, first of all great app, i've been using it for ages now. I am also getting the problem where the airplay icon has disappeared from this app. I'm using ios8 but it still shows up in all other apps when playing video, just not this one. i see that you're not currently developing on ios8 but if you could look into this it would be awesome as the main thing I do with this app is launch the content at my TV. Keep up the good work duder!

@soup_menu: With so many Giant Bomb premium podcasts out there now have you ever considered adding a podcasts page to the app? I know it's a "video buddy" but I've found it difficult as a premium member keeping track of the premium podcasts on mobile.

@counterclockwork87: Why don't you just use a podcast app?

@jakdwaugh: Although I haven't come across any explicit documentation about this, it seems that iOS 8 has dropped the AirPlay button from the default movie player in favor of the AirPlay controls in Command Center. If you open Apple's default Videos app you'll notice that the AirPlay button is gone there too. The good news is that this hasn't impacted AirPlay functionality at all, just how you en-/disable it. If you swipe up to reveal Command Center and then select your desired AirPlay Receiver, GBVB will direct the video there instead of the local device. Hope that helps.

@counterclockwork87: Unfortunately, podcasts aren't exposed through the API, so I would have to rely on the RSS feeds. At that point I would mostly just be writing a simple version of what other podcatchers already do very well, so while having all Giant Bomb-related audio and video in one place would be nice, I'm not sure there's a practical way to do it at this time.

Great App!

However, is there a queue function anywhere?

Can't seem to find one.

I just wanna queue a whole bunch of vids and let it play and also skip to the next vid.

Thanks!

Sorry if thi

This is a really dumb suggestion, but do you plan on scaling the app to fit iPhone 6/6 plus? It's not a huge deal to use it in the zoom mode but would be visually nice

@demazin: No, there isn't currently an option for continuous playback.

@ottoman673: It's definitely on my to-do list, but unfortunately I don't have an ETA at the moment.

A filtering system for videos like on qlcrew.com would be amazing.

Hey mate, the app is great, but for some reason the videos are downloading very very slowly for me. I have decent download speeds (avg 34Mbits), but I can't seem to even stream from the app without major buffering issues.

I'm going to assume that I am an outlier considering all the positive comments on here and other sites, but thought I would see if you have come across this issue with others? I'm using an iPhone 6.

Cheers mate!

@sinni14: Unfortunately, download speeds tend to be outside the app's control. It's possible that there's some network weirdness going on, and if that's the case the issue is likely to disappear on its own. You might also try rebooting or uninstalling & reinstalling, as those can sometimes cure odd issues.

It might be the file or my phone, but I've been having downloads finish and not show up in the downloaded section. This weeks UPF for example.

@soup_menu: Just wanted to say that I've been using the VideoBuddy app for months on my iPad and have yesterday gotten a Chromecast and streaming GB videos to it has been nothing but fan-fucking-tasic. Thank you so much for the work you have done!

@august: I just tried downloading the latest UPF and it seems to have worked, so it doesn't appear to be a universal issue, but if you've encountered it more than once it's probably more than just a fluke. Would you mind providing some additional details? Things like what device you're using and what OS you're running would help. Also, have you noticed any patterns? Does it tend to happen for certain videos, certain quality settings, or over certain network connections? Does retrying the download (at the same quality or a different one) help any? Alternately, you might try uninstalling and reinstalling the app; that clears out all the local data, so if something in your local install were to be the source of the trouble that ought to fix it.

@oscar__explosion: Thanks!

@soup_menu: just a heads up that "The No Go Show" video doesn't seem to have been picked up by the Video Buddy.

Thanks for the awesome work!

@geraltitude: It shows up if you show trailers. I think it might be a GB category error.

@orwellhuxzam: You beat me to the punch!

It looks like The No Go Show got entered into Giant Bomb's video database without a video type / category. When that happens, the video won't show up under its expected heading (in the app or on the site) and will get hidden in the app under Latest if you have the "Hide Trailers in Latest" option enabled (that feature works by requesting every video type except for trailers, but when a video has no type, it gets missed as well).

Videos without a video type usually get noticed and fixed pretty quickly (generally within a few days), but if you wanted to drop the GB guys a note it probably wouldn't hurt. The Bug Reporting forum might not be a bad place for that. In the mean time, a quick fix would be just what OrwellHuxZam suggested: temporarily disabling the hide trailers feature and then loading up the Latest category.

Great work on the app. Would love a "go back 15/30 sec" button in the iOS app.

Just got a Chromecast and this app is awesome. Thanks, duder!

For some reason the Unfinished: Home Furniture video doesn't show up for me in the app. Anyone else able to see it?

I'm on Android and I'm having trouble with it adding new videos too.

Wish we could get something like this on consoles.

@falk: It looks like Unfinished: Home Improvisation is currently missing its video type in the database. This is similar to the issue encountered with The No Go Show from a few months back and, unfortunately, it prevents the video from appearing in its expected location both in the app and on the site.

These sorts of issues usually get noticed and fixed within a few days, but in the mean time disabling the hide trailers features will cause the video it to appear if you load the Latest category. You could also try making a post in the Bug Reporting forum to let the fine folks at Giant Bomb know; I'm not sure if that's the preferred reporting method, but it seems like a decent way to go.

None of the E3 press conference videos are working for me. When I try to play them, I just get endless loading; when I download them they come through with size 0MB. They work on the site itself, and all the other videos seem to work fine in the app, so I'm not sure what the issue could be.

Thanks, love the app, keep up the great work!

@lylebot: It looks like database records were created with information about the press conference videos (their name, description, a thumbnail image, etc.), but that no video files have been associated with those records yet (a similar thing happened during last year's E3 too). We can probably chalk it up to folks being crazy busy producing all the content, so it may take until after E3 wraps for the dust to settle. For the time being it looks like the website may have to be the go-to for press conference coverage.

I came here to confirm my suspicions about this.

You can see that when loading up the videos from the website, it says 'loading stream data' instead of showing 0:00/whatever, so it's some kind of temporary measure put in place to get the videos up as quickly as possible.

Thanks for all your work! Love the app.

@soup_menu Hey, this seems like the best place to make you aware of something. Ever since upgrading to today's version of iOS (8.4, I think, the one with the new Music app), videos always start at the beginning. If I go to a downloaded video, it will show me how much I've played, but if I click play, it will start at the beginning of the video. Then, if I back out, it lost the previous time recorded and saves the new value. So I have to make sure I notice the amount I've watched before I click play.

A significantly lower-priority thing, but something I'd love; can you add a user flag to only download on wifi? I have to disable cellular access for the app, and that means I can't look to see if there's something new on cellular. A trifle of a bother for me. I don't know if it's a trifle for you to include.

@okinopolytrans: Thanks for the note about iOS 8.4. I'll have to poke around a bit to see what might have changed. With regard to no-downloading-over-cellular, that one may be a bit of work. I can definitely keep the request in mind when working on the app, but I don't know that I'll be doing much more than maintenance in the near future.

@soup_menu: Hey, love the app, I use it all the time. Just wondering if you have plans to sync video playback progress (10:14/38:25) and watched/unwatched state across devices. Would be a really useful feature for people with multiple devices. Thanks!

@snoring: It is something I've looked into, but the snag has been that I would like a universal solution so that the iOS version of the app could sync with the Android version of the app and that both of those could sync with the website. Unfortunately, I haven't come across a good way to do that, so while it remains on the list of potential features, it probably won't be implemented in the near future.

@soup_menu: it's gratuitous feature request time!!! Any chance of supporting iOS9 video picture in picture http://apple.co/1fgy6Ms ?

I watch more stuff in GBVB than most anything else, so this would come in super handy! thanks!

Just thought I'd chime in to say I'm experiencing the same video resume bug as Okinopolytrans. I am also on iOS 8.4.

Thanks for the terrific app!

@dvydra: Picture-in-Picture is definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on.

@danforth: I had a chance to do a little digging over the weekend and, long story short, Apple broke the ability to set the initial playback time for videos in iOS 8.4. The good news is that I had to work around a similar issue when dealing with some AirPlay weirdness and I was able to leverage that code here as well. An updated build is currently making its way through the review process and, with a bit of luck, it will hit the App Store by the end of the week.

@soup_menu: It's so awesome to see you in here addressing bugs and answering questions. I'm also having the "remember playback position bug" and am grateful that your paying attention. I already have the Support Rank D in-app purchase but I just grabbed Rank C and B to thank you again for the great software. I'll be cheapskate and save Rank A for picture-in-picture support, but this way I can give you as much as possible without just mailing a cheque haha.

Thanks again.

@jasonefmonk: Thanks, man!