Search and Watch Google Video From Your Mobile Phone

Thursday
Oct 19th
2006

UPDATE (Oct. 23, 2006): The application has been modified to allow for the downloading of both AVI and MP4 files, so that phones capable of MP4 playback can take advantage of the smaller file size.

How many times have you been sitting on the train, with nothing to do, and you thought to yourself, "Boy, I’d really like to be watching a video about pickles," only to realize that you have none on your person? If you’re like me, then the answer is plenty.

Well, worry no more. You can now search and watch Google Video right from your mobile communicator. That is, if you meet the following requirements:

  • Your phone has an XHTML-compliant browser
  • You have enough storage on your phone to hold large files
  • Your phone’s connection is fast
  • You have an application on your phone capable of playing AVI or MP4 files

While the first two are a must, there’s some wiggle room on requirements #3 and #4: having a fast connection and the ability to play AVI/MP4 files.

Though having a high-speed wireless phone service is not necessary, I cannot imagine how painful it would be to download a 5MB file over a data trickle, not to mention the cost. Many mobile providers offer a wide array of broadband packages, such as Verizon/Sprint’s EVDO or Cingular’s HSDPA network. If you’re already a subscriber to one of these services (or similar), continue onward. If not, find a friend who is and ask to borrow their phone for a couple of hours.

Now, if your phone already has an application capable of playing AVI/MP4 files…hooray! Pass Go and collect $200. For the rest of us, please take a moment to install one…

While I’m sure there are a whole slew of applications that provide mobile AVI/MP4 playback, the one that I chose to use was The Core Pocket Media Player. I currently own a Motorola Q phone (running Windows Mobile 5). TCPMP was easy enough to install and works reasonably well (Mac users can transfer/install the CAB file by Bluetooth conneciton).

Note: TCPMP has a plugins which allow it to playback MP4 files, though my attempts do so were unsuccessful. Video playback was choppy and unpleasant at best. If you would like to experiment with this method, you must download and install the ffmpeg and AAC codecs. In addition, MP4 downloads are freely available on the Google Video site, using the Download link on the right-hand side.

Now, onto the video….

Direct your XHTML-compliant phone browser to the following URL:

http://srobbin.com/mobilevideo

After you perform a search, you’ll notice that, below the title and description, are one or two links for AVI and MP4 files (not all videos allow the downloading of both types). Click on the file type that you would like to download. I’m not sure how this will work on other phones, but for my Q, Internet Explorer asks me if I want to save the video. After the download is complete, TCPMP automatically opens with the video pre-loaded. All I have to do is click play.

That’s about it. Search results have been limited to videos under 4 minutes. Anything larger would take ridiculously long to download, and would eat up a ton of phone memory.

Want to see it in action, but don’t want all the hastle of install apps on your phone? Check out this video demonstration of how it works.

Curious to know how the application works? Check out my post here on how to extract AVI files from Google Video RSS feeds.

If you have any questions, or further insite on how to make this better, please feel free to contact me at: mobilevideo [at] srobbin.com.

Comments

  • Pretty handy for my Q; too bad google doesn’t do something like this more simply on their side of things. Maybe I’ll send them an e-mail…

  • Nice job! Bookmarked. It works on my Treo 700w but the box to open file after download is greyed out.

  • Works great on my Treo 700wx… Loving it… Keep up the good work…

  • hi there,

    nice work, but two more suggestions:
    1) an option ’save as oAVI oMP4′ would be nice. me thinks that the mp4 files are smaller. also, the realplayer on most nokia phones can handle mp4 very well (dunno about avi)
    2) preview picture of the video would be nice

    cheers,
    torben

    srobbin replies: Thanks for the suggestion, Torben. It’s been update now to include MP4 files as well.

  • Nice! Can you make it work with youtube? Also how about adding options (i.e., 4 mins?

    srobbin replies: Sorry, at this time it’s only Google Video based. The hack used makes use of the MP4 and AVI files included in their RSS feed. I’m unaware of YouTube providing something similar. Though, if anyone knows of a good hack, let me know, and I’d love to incorporate it.

  • Hey, i think thats a good idea, but its not from Google why are you calling Google Video? any connection between the two?
    Hello??
    Another thing, Dou you think Africa especially Uganda can reach that level? if not what’s stopping it?

    Julius N. From Uganda

    srobbin replies: I had originally called it The UNOFFICIAL Mobile Google Video, though all of my intentions were to put emphasis on the UNOFFICIAL part. I never, and still do not, wish to infer that this is, in any way, a Google product. It is not. It is just a simple hack to provide mobile access to their videos. It is not authorized, endorsed, or promoted by Google at all.

  • All… thx for the TCPMP link. We just released our closed source derivative of TCPMP called CorePlayer @ http://www.coreplayer.com

    In about 4 weeks our Open Source TCPMP turns into better OSS @ http://www.betaplayer.com with the launch of BetaPlayer 1.0

    srobbin replies: Thanks for the links, Dan. Those are great alternative options, though the BetaPlayer link seems to take me to a non-existent page. I encourage everyone to submit alternative players, and to provide feedback on how it performs on your phones. As I said, I had only tried this on a Motorola Q, and would love feedback from other users.

  • Can’t seem to get it working on my Sony Ericsson K790i’s native browser or Mini Opera. It doesn’t download the link just displays text. :(

    Can’t wait for the youtube fix!!!

    srobbin replies: Thanks for the heads up. I will try to install Mini Opera on my phone, and will look into fixing this problem. As for the native Sony browser, if anyone else can help troubleshoot, please jump in. Thanks.

  • This isn’t going to pan out too well on non-smartphones like the Sony Ericsson K790 mentioned above. I tried it on my K790a through the native Sony browser and it downloaded the clip and played it in the streaming video player but there was no video, only sound. That’s because the K790/K800 (and W900) can only handle videos done in MPEG4 H.263 at 500kbps or less bitrates and a maximum of 320×240 resolution. Other smartphone players might be able to handle videos with resolutions higher than the actual device’s display resolution but non-smartphones cut every corner they can when it comes to multimedia - and the K790 is probably the most capable of the non-smartphones.

    What would be EXCITING, is if the videos were filtered or converted on-the-fly to say 320×240 and in MPEG4 H.263 for display on regular phones. THAT WAY, we could all get some Google Video love. And a browse function might be nice.

  • Nice job! but there is an important problem… most of mobile phones that supports video downloads, doesn’t support AVI o MP4 format. The standard format for mobile video is 3GP. So you can watch those videos if you have a windows mobile smartphone or a symbian smartphone with MP4 player support.

    3GP format has a low quality… but small size of files too…

    Cheers

  • Great tool! By the way, this works out of the box on the Nokia N93, which supports those MP4 files.
    http://blogs.s60.com/s60multimedia/2006/10/google_video_direct_to_mobile.html

  • Is there any chance we can build something similar that will work with YouTube?

  • I love this program. Any ideas why this saves all downloads on my 700P as the filename “downloadavi”? I use another program to rename the file as an .avi file and TCMP plays it perfectly.

  • Dave…

    Interesting topic… I’m working in this industry myself and I don’t agree about this in 100%, but I added your page to my bookmarks and hope to see more interesting articles in the future…

  • Point your phone at tinytube.net. It transcodes YouTube’s FLV to 3GP on the fly, and sends to your phone.

    No RTSP, but not many phones support that anyway… yet!

  • Dave…

    Interesting topic… I’m working in this industry myself and I don’t agree about this in 100%, but I added your page to my bookmarks and hope to see more interesting articles in the future…

  • very nice!.. i couldnt get my real player to open them but dloaded divx player for my e61 and its working fine.. a bit more steps than i thought but worth it for those boring days

  • Will this work on my Blackberry Pearl? I tried going to http://srobbin.com/mobilevideo and typed in a word in the search like, “cars”, but it does not show any results or links to click on for the videos. How could I make this work?

  • I have also created a website that let you search and convert google video and youtube videos on the fly without downloading and uploading.

    http://www.mymobileclips.com on your PC

    http://wap.mymobileclips.com on your mobile phone

  • Is it possible to make a version without 4min limitation? With cards like 1-2GB flat 3G rate its not bad idea.
    I would like to have possibility to download longer movies…

  • Markus…

    It was quite useful reading, found some interesting details about this topic. Thanks….

  • Great application. Simply the best app.
    These MP4 files won’t play on Sony Ericsson p990i. It’s a smart phone (really smart in some areas!), but not in the mp4 area :) It’s not recognizing this MP4 format. As somebody pointed out above, all SE phones have this problem. can only play with H.263 encoding.

    Could you make it available in 3gp or mp4 (h.263) format?

  • Nice hack you made - Thanks
    A suggestion:
    Why just thinking of online usage for mobile devices?
    I used your tool to convert on my laptop. it works there perfectly. Think of one could convert and assemle his desired video files and upload them from his computer to his mobile device offline -> just provide the “wired” internet usage, too ….with ofcourse then more than 4 Min. Videos.

  • When I came across your website I knew I had to try this out for my Q with TCPMP. The problem is that my Q says “Failed, Permission Denied!” when I try to delete the videos to make room for more. Any suggestions?

  • anyone got this to work with a blackberry pearl 8100? i tryed and it just says loading loading laoding and does nothing. i had to take the batter out to restart the phone.

  • Worked perfectly on my Tmobile MDA with TCPMP. I’ve been using this player since October with great success. Just wish I had thought about google video before now.

  • Ok the tool is a fantastic idea, top marks for it. But the problem is; i can download the avi files (which dont work on my phone) but the mp4 wont download. I get an error message telling me i dont have permission to access the page. any ideas why?

  • Hi, Wondering if this works on the Samsung D500. If not, is there any way to make it work on the D500? Would greatly appreciate a reply.

    Thanks,
    Nate

  • hi there,

    nice tool!
    would be great if we could see a preview image of the video, so one can better decide if to download or not.

    thanks,
    ukio

  • Nobody has responded to if this will work on Blackberry Pearl yet. Has anyone had that experience yet? Or if anyone knows of a media player that can be downloaded on BB Pearl.

  • When I download I only receive the sound and no video I’m using a tmobile dash.

  • this is so handy but does the phone have to be an american phone or can it be a british one?

  • no

  • Hi, the TCPMP rocks! There was a desktop version (of course in beta player) that wasn’t perform as well as the wm version does.
    Anyway I just wanted to mention that in the below link there is a link to ZAMZAR online file convertion and explainations about it that may help:
    Http://raizaM.BlogSpot.com

  • Ive been wanting to watch vids from google or youtube on my PSP for months. I found this site, and now i can download some of my favorite short videos and download my own movies on youtube straight to my PSP from the browser. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS!

  • Nokia Symbian 3.rd Edition bougth on March without any installed divx player have the same problem reported by TheGuru on November 27, 2006 @ 3:17 am and Jason Catudal on October 29, 2006 @ 2:29 pm (just H263 video support for MP4 format) and this leads to hear only audio as reported by Mickey on February 13, 2007 @ 9:35 am

    Please add some more compatible format like 3GP or lower codec mp4v (H263)

    Thanks,
    Pierpaolo

  • Please help me find the video codec for my samsung d500

  • Thanks! I’m always looking for a way to view mobile video on my new Nokia N95. Your site works on my default player but TCPMP is nice. If anybody knows anywhere else to stream or download video mobile video from, let me know

    Jackson

  • Can i get videos like that on my phone which is a sony ericsson walkman w300

  • Great search engine. Thanks. Any chance you will enable it to search all of google video - i.e. including videos longer than 4 mins? Phones such as the Nokia N95 can store up to 4GB on the memory card so to be able to access all of google video would be amazing. Thanks again.

  • cool works on my psp
    ty for telling me about this

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