1. YouTube’s higher-quality videos are sometimes available in the codec MPEG-4. This is a standard codec that is supported by QuickTime, and so when available, it can be streamed right away. I have some proof-of-concept of this running. There are two problems with this approach. First, not all videos are available in this format, and certainly not on other video sites (hint hint), and so it can’t be relied upon; I still need an alternate approach for FLV videos. Second, I haven’t found a way to determine if the video is available in the MP4 format before handing it off to QuickTime without downloading the data twice. I haven’t spent as much time on this approach as the others, as it only applies to a small subset of videos. However, I will be spending more time on it for higher-quality videos after I can get streaming to work.
2. Tubular currently uses the open-source Perian QuickTime codec to decode the FLV files. However, it cannot stream them. Under the hood, Perian uses the open-source Ffmpeg library to decode the video; Perian then massages the decoded video into a QuickTime movie, which is played by Tubular. I’m working on another approach that bypasses Perian and uses Ffmpeg directly to decode the video in real-time. I’m currently able to decode the video and audio, but not get them into QuickTime yet, which Tubular relies on for both playback and iPod conversion (and will be depended upon heavily for upcoming features).
3. Most recently, Adobe released the full specification for the FLV file format for free, as part of their Open Screen Project initiative. This information was previously available, but it required a decent fee and was only allowed to be used in applications that create FLV files, not read them. Since then, I’ve begun working on my own FLV file decoder based on the specification. Getting it to read in files quickly and accurately, however, is difficult. One convenient thing with this approach is that I’ll have complete control over the decoding, which means I can optimize and enhance it for specific hardware (including, say, mobile devices…), and makes streaming trivial. Clearly, this is the most optimal solution, and it’s one I’m very heavily pursuing, but is far more complex than using the above two methods. It was also just released barely a month ago, and I haven’t had as much time to work on it.

Hopefully soon, one of these techniques will prove successful, making Tubular all the more useful. I’m certainly not happy about the fact that Tubular cannot stream, and that’ll be a major focus point in upcoming versions.

• Tubular now has a Leopard-compatible 512×512 icon designed by Tom Stoelwinder.
• When a video is finished converting, the progress bar will fill and stop animating, instead of staying as indeterminate.
• The counter in the source table will now decrease when videos finish converting.
• Stopping or deleting a video conversion will remove the progress bar and cancel button properly
• Minor speed enhancements in video and category information loading.
• Memory leak fixes in the video data system.
• Under certain conditions, the cache would not empty properly; it should work correctly now

This will most likely be the final beta release. The 1.0 release is right around the corner, as I finish the help documentation and get the new web site, also designed by Tom Stoelwinder, in order. The goal is to have the final release before this year’s WWDC, which begins June 9th. I will be posting a preview of the new site very soon.

• Changed the bottom bar back to white. And there was much rejoicing.
• Fixed a major issue where the app would lock a registered user out after two weeks
• Fixed an issue where the app would crash if you clicked the back button while a movie was loading
• Switched to a system-standard toolbar, which allows for customization and persistence
• Fixed the issue where a hidden window titled “Do Not Modify This Window” would be shown while videos were being loaded, visible with Expose
• Lots of little UI tweaks, such as pressing Command-W to close the current window, and having the Tubular window re-open if it was closed when reactivating the application

Almost all of these bugs were submitted by users. Also, each bug is tracked by who submitted it. One of the ways this is nice is that very soon I’ll be able to have an automated system that goes through the fixed bugs every release, and emails people who submitted the bug saying “this bug you submitted should be fixed”. But anyway, thanks to everyone who’s submitted bugs so far. Please keep them coming!

You don’t have to update any email addresses or anything like that. The support email address is the same as it was before, and all correspondence from me in the future will still look exactly the same. I’ll put up a post when the process is 100% complete. Sorry for any inconvenience ahead of time.

• Fixed the issues with people being unable to register. If you were affected by this issue, please go into the Registration section in Preferences, and re-enter your information.
• Fixed a bug that caused Tubular to crash if you entered a YouTube user name with no favorites
• Fixed a bug with the importing preferences pane that caused undesirable behavior

You can download it directly, or get it through the auto-update in Tubular by selecting “Check for Updates” from the Tubular menu inside the app.

Also, as a reminder, I am updating the Tubular Twitter account as the new releases come out, so feel free to follow it.

Update (2/4/08 10:26 PM ET): From what I can tell, the problem occurs when the user types in their name and email address, and then clicks the Activate button (as opposed to pressing the Return key). This causes whichever text field you last typed in, typically the email address, to not get recorded by the program. This isn’t a problem with the algorithm, and it’s something I didn’t pick up on in testing because, well, I’m primarily a keyboard user. I have a fix for this issue, but I’ll need to gather some information from people affected to make sure this is the actual cause before I put this one to bed. To work around, simply type in your email address and press the Return key instead of clicking on the Activate button, and it should work. If it continues to fail, please contact me by email or in the comments.

Registration with the beta released last night seems to be broken for many people. I’m aware of the issue and am looking into it. If you’re concerned about the app not working without being registered, don’t worry. The app is 100% functional without registration for 2 weeks from the first day you opened the Tubular public beta. During testing of registration, I did test every single actual registration, and they all worked, so this was an unexpected issue.

The first signs of trouble with Tubular began developing at the end of December, 2006. At this point, we were still using the default Flash-based YouTube player. Up to that point, it was ugly, but it worked. However, suddenly, using this method stopped working. When you’re writing an app like Tubular, any change to YouTube has the possibility of breaking the app. I quickly noticed that there were changes to the way that Flash players were created on YouTube’s site. A small “key” string was being passed around, and was generated from YouTube’s servers. I couldn’t find a way to work around the issue while still using Flash. This is what led to the decision to switch from the Flash player to a QuickTime player based on the open-source Perian codec.

This took a lot longer than I was anticipating, mostly because of the way that Tubular was designed. A lot of rearchitecture had to be done to safely accomodate the new video player. However, I decided that this was a worthwhile trade-off at this point, especially since I would be able to extend the QuickTime player in the future to support things like a custom controller and a full-screen mode, as well as CoreVideo processing. This was during a particularly crushing quarter at the university I attend. Getting Perian running took about a month of my available time, and confirming that it worked with the rest of the system took even more. Much of the delay was due to my school work, but I decided not to tell anyone for fear of sounding like I was unable to finish on time. Which was obviously the wrong decision to make.

As customers grew more and more upset, I got more and more depressed about the project. I knew I was letting people down by not disclosing the nature of the delays. And they were getting upset at spending money on something that wasn’t happening. The more let down I made myself, the more difficult it was to work on the project. This eventually would spiral on and on. I know ths is a completely irrational decision, and I was definitely wrong for doing it. Tubular was and is a very emotional project for me.

In March, I started working full-time at a company doing web software development. This was required by my university as part of the graduation requirements. I thought I would have more time to work on Tubular, but I was wrong. Nevertheless, I trucked along and released a few updates over the summer. Each time, I would get a lot of response from people saying that I was taking way too long to finish. This continued to drive that downward spiral. Everything was starting to line up for the beta release.

In August, a lot of things had been lined up for the beta release. However, after the announcement that it was ready, there was a huge bug that was noticed in the video conversion code. When it occurred, it caused the app to start writing a lot of random data to disk. And “a lot” means several gigabytes, if left unchecked for a few minutes. This was introduced at some point after Tubular 0.9.8 was released, so nobody had to panic about it. But it was something that needed to be fixed before it could go out. The bug ended up being something incorrectly sent to ffmpeg, which handles transcoding the video into a QuickTime file for iPods. It took a long time to discover, and by the time I found the fix for it, I was taking classes again.

In late September, I found out that I would have to transfer to another university. This added another layer of stress. As time wore on, it became more difficult to find the time or energy to work on the project. This is nobody’s fault but my own, and should’ve been disclosed.

With very little time, I kept working on getting the release finished. I didn’t announce anything about it, though, because I was afraid of getting a lot of angry people on the blog. And when Leopard came out, everything turned for the worse again.

Since Tubular deals with YouTube a lot, it uses Safari’s engine to make doing the work easier. One such case was in the piece of code that got the raw video for a given YouTube video. Up until this point, it created a Safari page in the background, loaded the normal video player, and watched for the video stream. Once Tubular found it, it would stop dealing with the background page, and download the video. But Leopard included the new version of Safari 3, which caused much of that code to break. Now, getting access to that video is a very tricky thing to do, and so this complex method was needed. It’s taken us a long time to find a fix for this bug. In fact, we just found one three days ago. But that piece of the puzzle was such a showstopper that it caused the app to crash or hang in Leopard, and exhibit very weird behavior. It clearly wasn’t shippable. This all, once again, should have been conveyed to everyone.

So, to all of you, I’m very, truly, and deeply sorry. I have let you all down for my utter failure to act professional about my actions. I am turning myself around and am hoping to win back your trust. To that end, I will be much more open on the blog. I will let you know about delays when they happen, what their cause is, and progress on fixes. I will inform everyone on the status of upcoming releases and other information on the project.

Regarding refunds, I unfortunately can’t do any refunds right now, because of my financial situation. However, since Tubular is now in public beta, I will be able to supply refunds out of any future purchases. Please contact me at the support email address; I will not discuss refunds in the comments.

I hope that this explanation will at least answer many of the questions you all have. If it hasn’t, please respond here in the comments or privately by email.

• Registration support
• Leopard compatibility
• Increased reliability with locating the video raw video file (so playing or converting videos will be quicker, and will be less buggy)
• An all new preferences window, with settings for registration, auto-updating, caching, and your YouTube account
• Bug fixes for the bottom bar, video conversion, and the player

The update is available through the usual methods, as well as the download link above. The beta is now open to the public, but is time-restricted to two weeks before it must be registered. For everyone who has preordered, I’ll be sending out emails with the registration information, but all that is needed is the name and email address I have on record for you.

To do this, Tubular is using server validation to process registrations. This means that the app will be sending the name and email address you provide (again, the ones I have on file from your purchase) to our server, which will communicate back down to the program if you are registered. The server does not record any identifying information about your computer, nor does it keep history of previous validations, and the only time that registrations will be turned off is if they’ve been identified on an actual piracy site.

However, if there is still serious concern about using server validation, please let me know in the comments or by email. Otherwise, if you find any issues with the new version, please email support.

Speaking of emails, we’ve been hearing reports from people who aren’t receiving release emails. Some people are getting email A but not B, some are getting B but not A, some are getting both, and some aren’t getting any. For that, I apologize. It seems to be a problem with our side of things, and we’re looking into some alternate systems for getting emails out.

Finally, we’re on Twitter! If you’ve got a Twitter account and would like to receive updates through there, you can follow us at our profile page. We’ll be posting new releases, tips for using Tubular, and maybe even a funny YouTube video or two.