Steff.me

I bought this application via MacZOT, as part of their GiftZOT offer. I wasn’t really sure whether I would use this app or not, since I’m not really a fan of YouTube any way. Don’t get me wrong, YouTube is fantastic for seeing little clips and then carrying on with whatever you were doing (or getting lost in their related videos section for hours…), I’m just not a huge fan of navigating through rubbish that I don’t want to see. I’m quite happy to watch something if someone posts me a link, though. Anyway, this may all change thanks to Tubular.

For those who don’t know, in a nutshell Tubular is just a pretty application which can be used to view YouTube. You can do everything (to my knowledge) that YouTube offers you, however you also get a few added features, meaning that you have a reason to use this more than just as a pretty viewer.

Searching in Tubular

After searching for “Colbert iPhoto” using the search bar located at the top right of menu bar, this was the first result. As a point, I don’t often watch The Colbert Report as, being from the UK, I don’t always get what he’s on about (American politics and news doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Any politics or news don’t, actually). All of the results are shown as a clip image, as with YouTube, however these ones are mirrored. It’s only a slight touch but it looks better and is more integrated with the look of the Mac. Each result also has it’s title, obviously, and the time the video lasts for. When you’ve found what you’re looking for, simply double click on the image and the clip will play.

As you can see in the above picture, Tubular has two menu bars. The top menu bar has the ability to “Add to Favourites”, “Convert to iPod” and “Refresh”. Adding to favourites or converting act on the currently selected video clip and do as they suggest. The right menu bar is for navigation. Here you’ll find your favourite videos along with featured videos, most recent, most viewed, most discussed, most linked and top rated videos. All of these display results much like the search image above.

Playback in Tubular

What I like about this, is that it plays at the same size as the application window - not that little clip size YouTube gives. Yes, the resolution makes it look odd sometimes but that doesn’t bother me. So there we have it, easy video playback from YouTube, that looks even better than the website itself.

It’s a BETA…

When the clip finishes, as with all YouTube clips, you get to see the related items. This is where Tubular starts to fall apart for me. This feature, at the moment, seems rather buggy - being a BETA, I’ll forgive it. The problem is, that when the clip finishes you’ll be presented with a screen as below:

As you can see, it looks exactly like the YouTube version. You have your related items in the middle and the view next/previous related items as arrows on the bottom right and left of the screen. These arrows have a little circle around them that count down till the related items flick back and forth between different videos. By this I mean that when the timer gets to zero, a new set of related items appear in the box in the middle - exactly like you see in YouTube. Great. What was the problem? Well, if you click on any of these videos it won’t actually play in Tubular. See what happens:

YouTube is opened right there in the Tubular window. I’m sure this is just a small bug and will obviously be ironed out in upcoming releases.

Tubular also currently has no preferences in the menu item, something which I’m sure will be implemented soon. I’d like to see an option to set the size/resolution of the video playback, which would be a handy preference to have.

Features! Get your features!

One cool little feature of Tubular is the “Convert to iPod” button in the top menu bar. When you hit this button, the current video you’ve selected will be downloaded and sent to iTunes.

If you haven’t downloaded anything previously, iTunes will be opened and a playlist named “Tubular” will be created in your iTunes and will contain the video you’ve just downloaded. All of your future iPod converts will automatically download to this folder.

It’s a pretty cool looking application, I have to say. I’m impressed with how it feels, as it’s actually making me use YouTube more than I have done in the past. I would like to see a feature to allow me to paste a YouTube clip URL in and for it to play in Tubular. Some people send me links via AIM or MSN and it would be nice to have these play in this application. All in all, it’s a great little application and when it’s released to the general public or when it goes on sale, I’d recommend picking up a copy to try out. You can pre-order today via their website, at a price of $12.99 USD. If you love YouTube, what could be better than to flick through all those little clips of people getting hit in the balls or watching The Colbert Report in something that really does look pretty cool. If you don’t like YouTube, believe me, this application will pull you in to use it - it’s that cool.