Some of you have noticed that your favorite blogger has posted a new video but it’s not showing up in the listings view of the channel it was posted to. Please be patient – it will show up soon. When a person uploads a new video to YouTube it takes a while for YouTube to recode it into all of the various formats and bitrates to support all platforms. As soon as the mobile version is ready, it will appear in the listing. We automatically filter these videos from the listing to prevent the aggravation of seeing a video that you cannot play using our app.
Archive for February, 2010
Latest Video not Showing – why?
Saturday, February 6th, 2010Unplayable Videos in Blog View?
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Video Not Available
If you have been using our iPhone/iPod app to view your favorite blogger’s content, you may have seen this icon before.
Some of you have asked what this means and why it occurs, so we wanted to post a quick explanation. In most cases, this means that the video that the blogger has uploaded is being processed and is not yet available on the mobile platform. You would also notice that if you went to your blogger’s web page or YouTube channel on your iPhone or iPod Touch – you would see the same result.
Please be patient, this does not mean that you will not be able to see the video. When a content provider uploads content to YouTube, they generally upload it in the highest quality possible (usually high definition). YouTube then takes this video once it’s received, and converts it to all of the other possible formats, bitrates, etc. This processing takes a variable amount of time depending on how many new videos were uploaded that day, server load, etc. Sometimes the mobile version will be available in a couple of hours, sometimes it takes a full day.
The beauty of our application is that it provides an easy way for you to share the video. If you find that your favorite blogger has posted content that you simply must see right away, but you receive the “processing” (or “not available”) image above, use the share button to e-mail it to yourself or post it to your facebook wall and then view it on your computer.
No Videos? (updated 9:26PM EST)
Thursday, February 4th, 2010We are getting reports that the video views are not showing any results. We are currently investigating the issue and will post an update shortly.
Updated 4:52PM EST, 2/4/10: We have contacted YouTube. The problem appears to be intermittent and is related to the YouTube API and not our application. We will have another update soon. Thanks for your patience!
Last Update 9:26PM EST, 2/4/10: The problems earlier seemed to stem from DNS issues that prevented our app from locating YouTube to retrieve video data. We will add meaningful error messages in the next release. For the time being, if your video listings appear blank, or if clicking “Load more” does not load any more videos and then disappears, take a break for a few minutes and then try again – it may be a similar intermittent network issue. If, after 20 minutes the error is persisting, please do not hesitate to contact us using the button in the “About” tab of your app and we will do our best to help.
Remember, the only way we can improve with each new release is to hear from you, our users. Getting frustrated, deleting the app, and giving us a bad review isn’t helpful ;). We’re always here to help!
Updates are coming….
Thursday, February 4th, 2010Please make sure that you check this developer blog via the web or via our apps for the latest updates and news on what is coming. You can also use the “more apps” tab to monitor when new versions are up and coming and/or have been released. Of course, you can always check the app store as our updates will always be free and you will be notified when they are available.
In any case. As we have already promised – our updates that allow you to subscribe, rate, comment, and favorite videos using your YouTube account are almost ready for our final stages of testing. These will be available in the next release of the Unofficial iJustine AND Unofficial Shane Dawson apps. We are on track to have these updates completed this weekend and will submit them to Apple for review the first part of next week.
The update will be available as soon as they clear the app store approval process, so we recommend that you check back on the app store, our blog, or in the more apps tab in our apps next week for this major update. We will post again once the updates are available, or if there are any unforseen delays – so check back often to see what’s new 😉
Proxy Server or Jailbroken Phone?
Thursday, February 4th, 2010Through feedback through some of our loyal users, we’ve gotten some information that we wanted to share regarding using our apps on Jailbroken Phones and/or through network connections that use proxy servers:
Proxy Servers: A couple of users have reported that when they are using our app via a connection that utilizes a proxy server that they can see the listings of videos, but none of the videos will play. According to these users, when they select a video – the image in the top of the detail view that normally shows the play icon instead shows a “unavailable” icon similar to what we have discussed before in this blog. This is due to a limitation on the YouTube player within the phone itself and is not a result of something in our application. You would also find that if you went to the built in YouTube app, you’d see the same result. Please make sure your connection is not utilizing a proxy server otherwise you may not be able to play videos on the phone.
Some public wifi hotspots automatically use proxy servers – places such as restaurants, hotels, and many public wifi hot spots in a work environment. It is also not uncommon to use a proxy server specifically to prohibit access to a site such as YouTube. For this reason, please make sure your connection is free of proxy servers and the built-in YouTube app will play videos normally prior to contacting us for support when video playback fails.
Jailbroken Phones: Of course, many people out there are using Jailbroken phones – this is no secret. As most people know, these phones can usually not only download apps from the App Store, but also from third party sources. Just the process of jailbreaking a phone introduces issues with YouTube and other built in features of the phone. We cannot possibly support all of the potential configurations of jailbroken phones, so we recommend that if you have a jailbroken phone, and you experience trouble using our app, you investigate all potential third party add-ons you have installed to your phone prior to contacting us. We also ask that you disclose that your phone is jailbroken when you contact us. As for our app, we know it’s stable and works 100% of the time on a standard iPhone or iPod Touch. If you are experiencing troubles using the phone’s built-in YouTube player, our app will not function. We use the very same player that is built into the phone – so please do not contact us if the native YouTube player on your phone will not play.
There are also many other “third party” plugins that cause issues on jailbroken phones and are also unsupported. Safari Download Manager, and Safari Download Plugin are two such apps that cause issues with pretty much any form of streamed or downloaded media. We never endorse jailbreaking your phone, and this is especially true if you are a casual user without much knowledge of how the iPhone actually works. Additionally, we do not have access to a jailbroken phone for testing, so please keep this in mind prior to contacting us for help through our support e-mail address.
We can try to help as much as possible – but the two items listed above (Proxy Servers and Jailbroken phones) so far represent the cause of issues that have been reported to us. Thanks for reading!
