Videos from Websites

Question

New iPhone user. I go to a couple of woodworking sites that have instruction videos. I touch the link, that page opens, andin the ara where the video should be playing I get a blue cube with a question mark. Why won't those videos play. Same thing on ESPN.COM and a few other sites Thanks for any help. Rick

Answer 1

Welcome to the forums.
As others have noted, you can't play those in Safari. All is not lost, however.
(All instructions for PC -- find equivilent Mac type things on the internet). On your home computer get Downloadhelper for Firefox (the only browser you should be using :>). Now go to those sites and download the flash videos (FLV format). Use FFMEG to convert to WMV (instructions here: http://worldtv.com/blog/guidestutorials/flvconverter.php ).
Finally, bring into an MPEG4 conversion program (email me for details -- I am forbidden to mention here: mike at kelleytown dot com) and convert to MPEG4. Load into iTunes and copy to your phone.
It seems like a lot of steps but I did this one time while composing a message of about this length -- so no time at all (maybe less than 30 seconds for a five or ten minute video). It gives you flash videos on your iPhone, albeit not on the fly as it would be if you could directly address them.
Or wait until about April, when my SWAG is the third parties should have a browser or plugin available to view flash directly (but my method will still let you always have the videos even if you can't get to the page or otherwise connect).