What's the best format to put a video on a website?

bbchris

Is it WMA? If so, how do you stream it on the site? Thank you! :nw

AQUARIAN AGE · Austrian Peacekeeper Joined: 22 Dec 2001 Posts: 612

Media Player 9 series....

MIKE BURN

To throw in my two cents... WMA is a bad format, because it is a format which can (usually) only be used with a player capable of doing so (Windoze-Syndrome...just as bad as the crap Real-Format IMHO).

The *.wmv format delivers a better quality anyway and can also be watched with non Windoze players like Winamp.

To cover also Linux and MacOSX/MacOS users you should also prepare a M-PEG file. The disadvantage of M-PEG is a nearly double as big file size compared to WMV and a slightly worse quality. Quicktime only covers Mac-Users but not Linux users. Therefore I suggest preparing a WMV file for Windows Users and a M-PEG version for users of other platforms.

MIKE

10 free song uploads||1 free video upload

bbchris

Thanks Mike! :nw

Would I be able to stream them from a site? Or simply download? Friend wants to stream them if possible. What's the HTML for that, do you know? Does streaming video eat up bandwidth? Am I asking too many questions?!?!?

MIKE BURN

Well, video always eats up a lot of bandwidth by nature...

...there's way more information than in an ordinary MP3-Audio-File

You can use simple HTML code, a link that is like a link to a website where you simply point to the video file directly on a server. Depending on the bandwitdh of your server's ISP connection, server- configuration and power and last but not least the router/s involved you cannot serve more than a few users at the same time without noticeable decrease of your file-serving speed and download rate.

In case you really want to make a video streamable for a huge number of users at the same time, you have to buy a license and setup a dedicated streaming server like Apple's Quicktime Server or rent space at a Real-Media File-Serving farm. This costs money and is usually not being setup by somebody who never worked with this kind of utilities in a server environment. In other words it is very expensive because you pay for example at Real-Media for the ongoing maintenance too. If you have many users and not much money, you may also reduce the quality of the video stream step-by-step until you arrive at a level where you see only pixel and hear noise (i.e. the usual Real-Media streams for the masses). That's not the quality I would recommend to offer for concert promoters or label-dudes, I would rather do the manual-download-way and in case of bandwith concerns only by e-mail and 'hidden/secret' link (non-public on your website so to say

bbchris

Thanks so much Mike!! It's not for a music site, more of a tourist site but I think all your comments still prevail. :kiss

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

Quote:
rent space at a Real-Media File-Serving farm

RealMedia's quality sometimes isn't great, unless you use the highest quality codec and hi-speed only. But it's still my favorite for video because almost everybody can view it - if it's a large/hi-speed file they can download it.

If the stream is not in high demand (doesn't need a special server-farm) it can easily be inserted into the page or as a RealPlayer popup using RealProducer freeware.

Real has a new line (Helix) of conversion & streaming software, so I think v.8 was the last of the "Real Producer" product line.