By Graham K. Rogers

A few years ago, when podcasts first begn to appear on my iPod touch (this was before the iPhone belatedly arrived here), I subscribed to the Portable Film Festival which gave me downloads of several of short films of mixed genres. Apart from a personal enjoyment, I used some of these in the classroom via the projectors available.

That podcast seems to have stopped (although there are still links online), but there are many other sources for video, both using the medium of the podcast and other online sources. There is of course YouTube.

Well-made and independent movies are less easy to find on the main video sites like YouTube, and those available on the iTunes store here are of limited interest to me, so I was interested to see mentioned in an item by Mel Martin on TUAW the arrival of an app for movie access: SnagFilms. While the app has potential, it is spoiled by a number of shortcomings. The website of SnagFilms outlines the philosophy of the organisation.

When I first opened the SnagFilms app on the iPhone, I was offered a login via Facebook or Guest. I chose Guest. The opening screen -- a bit busy on the iPhone -- had a carousel display of 3 new movies available. At the bottom of the screen were 5 menu icons: Home, Categories, Queue, Search, and About. Each had a small advertisement displayed which I did not find intrusive. The Home screen had the carousel display, while categories had 17 different selections, like Festival Films, Science & Nature, Thriller, Drama and Pop Culture.

Each of the categories showed a number beside the section title (e.g 23 Comedy), but when I accessed any of the sections, there were fewer movies listed (Comedy - 5). I could find no obvious way to load more and none appeared while I was examining the app. As I had logged in as a Guest, I am unable to say if this were the reason (see below) or if this were due to my location.

The Queue feature sounds useful, but this was not available unless I logged in using Facebook. This somewhat limits the value of the app. Later when I tried to add a movie to the Queue I was prompted for the Facebook login again. I had already seen mention of this in the article by Mel Martin. Like him, I am fed up with the number of apps that do this. I use Facebook, especially as a means of communication with students, but I do not want to link all aspects of my life to social networking: another app that does this is [s]edition but that does allow me to log in without a Facebook connection.

By accessing the SnagFIlms browse page in Safari on the iPhone I was able to see the full list of movies: the same was displayed on the Safari page on my iMac; but not all are available in the area, which may explain in part why the displays were limited in the app.

A link offered to list those files that were available and I was able to look through more than 20 pages (I stopped at 21 and they were still coming). At random, I entered a few of those (regionally available) titles I had found using Safari (on the Mac) into the search feature of the app. The index on the SnagFilms site shows a far richer collection of films than I was able to find in the app itself, which shows how limited the app is. Each of those titles I entered into the Search panel was found and I was able to download them for viewing, one by one.

I tried to view one of the movies I accessed via a VGA monitor I have in my office. In portrait mode the display was correct, but when I turned the iPhone on its side, the image displayed was full screen but was also on its side, while other movies displayed correctly (and I double-checked to make sure). I also trued this using a VGA projector in a classroom with the same result. I was not at this stage able to check either the iPhone or iPad with an HDMI connection on a television.

I am grown up enough to find Indy movies by myself and do not need such an app -- convenient as it is for centralizing available movie collections. Some of those I found, I had already seen on other sites. While running the app, I found a number of sites, such as Smart Movie Making and Portable Film Festival. Using the search facility in the Podcasts app on the iPhone also brings up several possible resources.

iPad Display

Because of the regional restrictions -- you need to experience this to understand the frustration -- and the wide availability of other sources for video access, as well as the pandering to Facebook, I was almost ready to put this app in the trash, but I tried it with the iPad as well. The display, as one would expect, was much nicer. I shall hold onto this a while longer.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.