They actually have started work. They just haven't updated the Roadmap yet

Clearly my questions were targeted at the StackIdeas team, not other members of the site, as they really can't answer the questions that have been asked. If you look closely you will see that I didn't ask if they had started working on 1.4, I made a statement about the roadmap having not been updated, and asked a question about how long they think it will take this time around. Want to go ahead and take a stab at answering that question as well? Or do you want to admit that you have nothing to add to this conversation and that you were just butting in where you were not wanted?

Covertly my questions were actually targeted directly at Mark Lee as he is probably the only person in the world who can actually fully answer my questions. At this point is is just a matter of waiting to see if he actually does answer the questions, or if he gives us a cookie cutter Public Relations answer.

With all due respect, we both know your questions aren't "directly" targeted to the Stackideas team, as the both Mark and Justin have asked you to contact them directly via e-mail on countless occasions. Your last 3 posts have just been desperate attempts to get pitty and attention. I do not understand what happened to you, you were a positive and valuable member of this community up until a month ago, and then you just started lashing out at everyone and complaining about everything.

Anyway, sorry for trying to be nice and answering your question to the best of my ability. I will let Stackideas deal with your trolling. I have better things to do

Isn't it funny that when someone starts off with 'all due respect' they use it as a shield to be disrespectful.

You assume you know something that you do not know.
Yes, Mark has offered to communicate via email and skype, Maybe, just maybe' if I am not doing that, there is a reason why I am not doing it. Possibly because I do not want Mark to have my email address or skype number. Maybe because I do not check my email ever, because I get thousands of emails every day. Maybe, I don't like skypes TOS involving invasion of privacy.

And if you look at my question you will see that for once I was not trolling in any way. They were two honest and valid questions.
1. Do we have to wait 5 months again for the next update. That is a simple and valid question.
2. Is there any chance that the video feature will be done in HTML5 as this would allow us to not need to install and run the resource intensive FFMPEG. This is also an extremely valid question.
Neither of these questions are questions you can answer, nor are they anything that you have offered up any valid input on.

NOW, with all that said, if you would like to offer up some information in regards to HTML5 and its strengths and weaknesses, pros and cons for using it etc.... I am all ears. I do not honestly know if HTML5 is a better option, all I know is that it can be done with HTML5 and that you do not need FFMPEG if you do it in HTML5. I also know that it requires a better programmer to do things with HTML5 and that there may be some compatibility issues in doing such. But these are things that only Mark can answer, he is the only one who will know what he is capable of.

For a very good overview about the current state of html5 for video check this out: http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/

Jannik,

The best way to deal with a Village idiot that resorts to the standard behavior of extreme jerkitude to get attention is to not engage in any back and forth comments with them. The Village Idiot posts a topic such is this one to serve as a springboard for their sociopathic gratification. A sociopath believes that their own beliefs and opinions are the absolute authority, and this type of behavior shows they only have a complete disregard for the opinions of others. It is not an informed discussion. Sociopaths are professional liars. The sociopath will fabricate stories and make outlandish, untruthful statements, such as, "Maybe because I do not check my email ever, because I get thousands of emails every day." They believe they are able to make these lies sound convincing to others with their confidence and assertiveness. Fact is they crave attention, and will do almost anything to get attention. If a person got thousands of emails a day, you'd think they would be far too busy responding to those emails, rather than resorting to their absolutely asinine tactics of deliberately provoking a confrontation in an online forum.

The most effective thing to do is to not respond at all to them. By ignoring the Village Idiot, it makes them cringe because they are once again exposed to the overall community as the extreme narcissistic online antagonist they are, and no matter what you try to do to reason with this type of social misfit, they will always be ready to pick a fight just to get the attention they so desperately need. Just as you have said above it is best to let Stackideas deal with their trolling tactics. As you said, "I have better things to do and that is the best way to stop their pathetic act from continuing.

Simply put - WITHHOLD ATTENTION!

"Sociopathy is a type of anti-social personality disorder, a condition that prevents people from adapting to the ethical and behavioral standards of his or her community." http://www.wikihow.com/Determine-if-Someone-Is-a-Sociopath

Actually, Mark already answered the question: is it going to take another 5 months for 1.4? The answer is no. He's said a few times that the reason 1.3 took so long is because they were working on EB5 at the same time and were stretched thin. Once EB5 is out, they would be able to churn out ES updates much more regularly. So when you see EB5 released, you can bet they will speed up the updates on ES.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” ~ Winston Churchill

The goals set forth by Mark and his team in the roadmap are simply tools to focus their energy in positive directions, and we must all understand that these goals can be changed as their priorities change. For each new one added, there may be others that get dropped. After all, they are the experts at developing software, otherwise none of us would be paying any attention. I have complete confidence in Mark and his team, that they will do what they believe is best for the overall customer base and community as a whole, and not bend to the will of those individuals that have no patience or positive ideas to contribute.

Mark himself has publicly mentioned about videos saying "I believe we will definitely go with HTML5 just like plupload we opted in for html 5" (source). I have full confidence in this.

Josh Lewis wrote:

Mark himself has publicly mentioned about videos saying "I believe we will definitely go with HTML5 just like plupload we opted in for html 5" (source). I have full confidence in this.

Awesome, thank you for actually contributing to this conversation, do you happen to have a link to that? Because I have not seen that conversation.

Josh posted the link above to the conversation where Mark replied.

SOURCE: http://stackideas.com/forums/html5-and-videos

Mark on Friday, September 19 2014, 06:12 PM #

I believe we will definitely go with HTML5 just like plupload we opted in for html 5. Anyway we haven't even have the time to start working on EasySocial 1.4 because most of our time have been on the forums answering questions like "Will 1.4 have this?", "Will you consider this?"

Mark on Saturday, September 20 2014, 02:40 PM #

Hello Josh,

We are actually already using PLUpload on our photos just that we don't really use all their features but in EasyBlog 5, you will see some examples of plupload's preview implementation

We tend to always learn from our past mistakes or improper implementations on previous releases and try to work them up again when we refactor codes. I guess this is just a normal software development life cycle Basically some of what you see on EasyBlog 5 will be implemented on EasySocial 1.4 and we will improvise on those functionality.

Hello Tango,

I think you are misunderstanding the difference between FFMpeg and HTML5 . It doesn't mean that using HTML5 would avoid FFMpeg altogether. FFMpeg is still required to manipulate videos that are uploaded on site. For instance, to extract a single second frame from a video to use that as a screen shot of the video would still require FFMpeg

Hello Tango,

Thank you for your inquiry. That's a really good question, actually.

I believe from a technical point of view, Mark have already responded to you. As for your 'roadmap inquiry', we apologize for not updating the roadmap yet; I'll request for the team to update the roadmap soon. I assure you (and the rest of our beloved community members) that the dev team are working on EasySocial as we speak.

From the looks of the development pace of both EasySocial and EasyBlog, it doesn't look like we need another 5 months for the next release. As pointed out by Mark and John Leake (thanks John!), the main reason why EasySocial took too much time is that the team were developing two major releases; EasyBlog 5 and EasySocial 1.3.

I hope this answers your question. Let me know if there's anything more that I can assist you with.

"If the video can be played back in the browser you could use the Canvas feature of html5 to playback the video in a canvas and then post a still from that video to your server using javascript" no FFMPEG is needed if everything is coded correctly.

That same user posted "Maybe you could even automate it" (source) which makes it sound like it's either very tricky or possibly not done via automation. I did some looking around and couldn't find any real solutions from other people on this. If you can find something online that points the stacked team in the right direction on how to achieve this, it will help our case on avoiding FFMPEG. Sites that have accomplished this, sources were folks got close, news of if it's been done.

Josh Lewis wrote:

That same user posted "Maybe you could even automate it" (source) which makes it sound like it's either very tricky or possibly not done via automation. I did some looking around and couldn't find any real solutions from other people on this. If you can find something online that points the stacked team in the right direction on how to achieve this, it will help our case on avoiding FFMPEG. Sites that have accomplished this, sources were folks got close, news of if it's been done.

That level of time and resources is not out of my realm of possibilities, however if I were to do this from the community, honestly I would expect something in return from the community. We are not talking about a trivial amount of research and development here. We are also not talking about a trivial amount of profit for StackIdeas in this.

So now, for the first time in our communication process there is a legitimate reason for private communication between Mark and myself if it is something that Mark is even interested in.

Hello Tango,

You will still need FFMpeg to convert .mov files to .mp4 unless your .mov file are encoded under H.264 format.

I fail to see the issue with this, even Apples iPhone encodes their videos in h.264 video, with AAC audio. Both by the way are standards of MPEG 4. Most other recording devices push their videos out in mp4 format.

I suppose the issue comes in with semi old cameras that use .mov. I personally use modern camera's, but could see how this would be an issue for some.

Yes, that's correct because we cannot just assume that everyone is using the latest devices. At least not for now

We are not talking about the latest devices here. We are talking about the iPhone 3gs (the first to actually record video) and later models. h.264/AAC has been the industry standard for close to (if not more than) 10 years now. Once we get into the conversation of video formats, we are talking about what I do for a living, there are very few things in the world that I know better than audio/video.

If that's true, I'm ln favor of not using FFMpeg considering that many major hosts do not allow it and assuming a workable solution can be made. I suppose there are more file formats that are of concern?

When dealing with video files the file type .mov, .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .mkv, etc are really not that important, these file types are just containers (the real world equivalent of the box your movie comes in). What is important is the encoding method used. For the last 10 years (give or take) the vast majority of the world has only used 3 encoding methods (as a general rule of thumb) those methods are (in order of use) h.264, VC-1 (SMPTE), and h.262. This is why these are the three encoding formats that are used by Blu-ray players, and why all Blu-ray players must support playback of these encoding methods. It is also a pretty safe bet that as long as you have updated your web browser in the last 5 years (I hope you have, because it is a security risk if you have not) there is a pretty good chance that your browser will know what to do with files encoded in these standards. There are a few exception out there, but none really worth mentioning.

While we are on the topic, and I am feeling like contributing and educating people....
If you are not filming in one of those three encoding formats (like myself) chances are you are recording with a VERY expensive camera, and recording in a Raw Image Format. But if this is the case, there is a pretty good chance that you have no desire to share your 4k resolution file with the rest of the world as 4096 x 2160 progressive is, generally speaking, a little over kill for the internet. In this case you will do what I do and down sample your final video during editing, and what you end up with is almost always a smaller file, typically 1080p (1920x1080) or 720p (1280x720) or perhaps even smaller, but in any case when we do that we encode the video almost universally in an h.264/AAC format.

Just a little side info for anyone who was interested in how movies are made.