DeviceAtlas 2.2 adds video and streaming properties and tests

2009 has just started and we already have a new update for DeviceAtlas. Today we are completely reviewing all the properties related to video and streaming. We have done a deep analysis of what we had and what was needed and we think we have done a great job. We have worked closely with our friends at Mobizoft and we have created a handful of new properties that are covering MUCH better what you can do on a mobile device with media files.

We started analysing how video files are normally produced and we identified that 3GPP and MPEG4 are the two most common envelopes used in mobile. 3GPP actually seems to be more popular in mobile, but MPEG4 is still a very important format. Within these envelopes you can bundle audio or video or both, so we created a number of properties that provide information about the envelope together with the video or audio codec, so H.263 and H.264 for video and all the well known AMR and AAC for audio. If this was not enough complexity, we saw that both audio and video had different levels that represent bitrate and maximum size in pixel, so we have to split again and create a few more properties. Again some long investigation brought us to a short list of levels that made sense for mobile devices.
You can see a discussion on our forums here and the final list here.

The list of properties that we have identified and created is brand new and hardly any of our sources has any information about these, but that is not a problem, in fact we have TA-DA to the rescue. We set up a streaming server and we created a number of tests for downloads. I am pleased to say that we now have *41* tests available of which media downloads and streaming are about 50%. In order to fill the values in DeviceAtlas we need your help; we started with a few devices that we have here and with local Irish operators, but we know that many operators are still blocking streaming, for example (how's is _possible_ that they still block something these days?!?!), so we will really need your support and we think TA-DA is PERFECT here. Most white papers and device specifications out there play their trumpets about how great the devices are and how many media formats they can play, but we've seen that when you get down to testing and you mix and match codecs and envelops, it's not all so shiny.

We think these properties will be of great help for anyone that is serious about mobile media, so start TESTING!