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    The iPad is a series of touch-screen tablet devices developed by Apple. The iPad can browse the web, playback local and streamed content, and run a large variety of third party apps, including games.

    Giant Bomb iPad App... the Gerstmann Factor

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    StickNutzman

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    #1  Edited By StickNutzman

    Now that Jeff owns an iPad, and can PLAINLY SEE that: 
    1. the Giant Bomb iPhone app looks janky when blown up to 2x size 
    2. none of the videos on Giantbomb.com work in mobile safari (which they know about, being iPhone owners... hence the app) 
     
    ...how long until the app gets the proper iPad treatment? 
    Also, as I have no knowledge of the subject, how tough would it be for the Whiskey Media guys to convert all the videos on their various sites to HTML5? Obviously that is the Steve Jobs vision for the future of the web... but I have no idea how much work has to go into a complete switch away from Flash. Browsing the rest of the site features is awesome on the iPad though... sitting on the couch scouring the site for quests is lots of fun. :)

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    calum_s_gunn

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    #2  Edited By calum_s_gunn

    I'd like the iPhone app to work with the boards, a la the delicious Eurogamer app. 
     
    < / thinking out loud >

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    StickNutzman

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    #3  Edited By StickNutzman

    Yeah, that's another issue at current... but it seems like that would be an easier fix than converting the videos.

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    mathewballard

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    #4  Edited By mathewballard

    They could create iPhone OS versions of their websites. Like The New York Times and other websites that use Flash and HTML5 video depending on what is being used to view the website. But, it does take a lot of work to do something like that. I don't know if it would be worth it for them, afterall all the Wiskey Media websites combined probably don't get as many hits as some of those larger websites.

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    StickNutzman

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    #5  Edited By StickNutzman

    I assume using Google Analytics or some similar service they can see exactly how much web traffic is coming from iPhones/iPads and make the decision that way. Upgrading their iPhone app to work on iPad, maybe adding some forum tools to it and whatnot, would be just fine with me. I just wish they would discuss it on the Bombcast or something... maybe a strongly worded email is in order. ;)

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    zanzibarbreeze

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    #6  Edited By zanzibarbreeze

    What file format would HTML5 videos run in? Would it just be whatever anyone wanted, or FLV? I guess it wouldn't be FLV, even though that's almost the standard now.

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    Ferginator4k

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    #7  Edited By Ferginator4k

    Man it would be nice if the forums were accessible via the app.

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    ExcessDebris

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    #9  Edited By ExcessDebris
    @StickNutzman: I would throw my support behind such a strongly worded email in support of this issue.
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    jeff

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    #10  Edited By jeff
    @StickNutzman said:
    ...how long until the app gets the proper iPad treatment? Also, as I have no knowledge of the subject, how tough would it be for the Whiskey Media guys to convert all the videos on their various sites to HTML5?
     
    1. Never. The app was primarily designed to allow people to see the site's videos. A switch to HTML5 would make more sense at this point.
     
    2. It'd be tough. It'd take months of compression time, plus weeks of man hours to restore the raw footage from backups to make them available for recompression. 
     
    So if and when we decide to make a change to our video compression, it will likely be on a go-forward basis, with some exceptions made for popular older videos.
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    yoctoyotta

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    #11  Edited By yoctoyotta
    @Jeff:  Would it be feasible to allow the low-res h.264 mobile versions of the videos that you've been converting all along to be accessible from a  video's page so they can be viewed from an iPad via the website instead of the app? I'm a happy owner of the iPhone app so I'm not trying to get, uh, free stuff, for . . . more free. But you know. Words. Thoughts. 
     
    Edit: And yeah, I'm way happy using the iPhone app on the iPad despite the low resolution, but your development team has made such a beautiful interface for the main site, it's a shame having to jump between apps to watch a video if I'm reading your articles and forums in Safari.
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    StickNutzman

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    #12  Edited By StickNutzman
    @Jeff: Thanks for chiming in on this one, duder. I knew it would take a considerable effort to convert Giant Bomb's huge storehouse of video, but I wasn't sure on all the details. I think most people would be more than happy with the "go-forward" approach, because most people wouldn't even know a difference. For me, most of my video watching is newly posted stuff anyway. 
     
    I will say though, other than the video/forum posting issues, browsing GB on an iPad is awesome.
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    rmills87

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    #14  Edited By rmills87

    They will not be developing an iPad application.  I emailed the Bombcast with the question of them developing an app for the iPad since I had one pre-ordered one.  They replied with a simple "No."  See email below: 
     

     On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Giant Bombcast  <bombcast@giantbomb.com> wrote:

    No.

    Love,

    Bombcast!

    On Mar 16, 2010, at 4:34 PM, Ryan Mills wrote:

    Greetings, GiantBomb!

    My name is Ryan Mills, I live in Macungie, PA, and I FUCKING LOVE YOU GUYS!  I have a question pertaining to the upcoming iPad.  Will you be investing in development for a GiantBomb application that takes full advantage of the iPad?  I understand that I will be able to download the GiantBomb iPhone app (which, of course, I will), but from my understanding, using this application on the iPad at full screen will only stretch the images.  Thanks for taking the time to check this out!

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    subject2change

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    #15  Edited By subject2change

        @Jeff said:

    " @StickNutzman said:

    ...how long until the app gets the proper iPad treatment? Also, as I have no knowledge of the subject, how tough would it be for the Whiskey Media guys to convert all the videos on their various sites to HTML5?

     1. Never. The app was primarily designed to allow people to see the site's videos. A switch to HTML5 would make more sense at this point. 2. It'd be tough. It'd take months of compression time, plus weeks of man hours to restore the raw footage from backups to make them available for recompression.  So if and when we decide to make a change to our video compression, it will likely be on a go-forward basis, with some exceptions made for popular older videos. "
    I dont know your guys storage method, however wouldn't it be viable to keep say an H264 master of your files stored on an external raid device? While H264 isn't an editing codec it's good enough to save masters of already edited down pieces of video game footage at full resolution, 2 pass and 100% quality.

    However if you are in need of a compressionist or someone to recapture footage or whatever I am willing to move to CA from NYC :p

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    ExcessDebris

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    #16  Edited By ExcessDebris

    if you use the iPhone app on the iPad, how do the actual videos look when you watch them on the iPad. Does anyone have one to try this out?

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    shakra

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    #17  Edited By shakra

    With Adobe Media Encoder you can just have it run on a spare computer and convert every video in a giant queueueue. It would take minutes to set it up and the rest of the time is just the program doing its thing automatically.

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    airules

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    #18  Edited By airules

    Oh I'm sure the program doing it's encoding thing is all well and good but it's finding and readying the files which is the nightmare. If the backcatalogue of vids hasnt been archived in a way which makes this easy to do (or archived at all. After all almost everything on this site is for the here and now not for 5 years time) then this would be a real horror. 
    Shame there'll be no iPad super app though. 
    I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the full season release of the Endurance Run on iTunes. :P 

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