I have a few 150 meg videos that I want to display on a website. What is the best way to show them? What code should I use to display them? Are there any ways to save bandwidth? Will it really use 1 gig of bandwidth for every 10 shows?
What kind of format are you talking about? I think the best you are going to be able to do is perhaps be more aggressive with your compression in your chosen format (or else look for another format if possible). Are you using the Flash .FLV file format (which can hold more than one type of compression)? You can also tweak the settings of the compression so that you give up some detail in order to save space. Also, your audio compression might be able to be tweaked as well. How long is this video (in minutes/seconds)? You could also break the video into segments if you think it unlikely that someone will want to watch the entire freaking thing at one time. My widescreen corporate video compressed for online viewing (about a 3 minute video) takes up a little over 15 meg. Good luck.
These are all large 150 meg 45 minute files, all in .avi format. Bandwidth isnt really an issue, I just need to know the best way to display them on the page. Which player is best?
go with flash. however, try to compress them as mirage mentioned. otherwise your users will be quite upset i guess...
What if you were to upload the video to a video hosting site like youtube or googlevideo or something and then find some fancy embedding code to put it on your page. both are owned by google and have great uptime and service. Best of all, you wouldn't need to host the video yourself! Hope this is a valid option. otherwise the only other option I could see owuld be to compres the video yourself and host it and have it stream through flash like has been suggested here which would turn out worse than youtube or googlevideo IMO. I heard youtube was going to start hosting higher rez videos too, in the near future, might wanna keep on top of that!
Whoa! I do NOT recommend posting AVI files online UNLESS you want people to download the entire avi file for their own. The reason is: 1) AVI files are HUGE compared to, say, .FLV files that the Flash Player can use 2) AVI files cannot be played until the ENTIRE file is downloaded first! With FLV files, they allow for "progressive download," which means you can start viewing the video when only a fraction of the file has been downloaded. This is not possible to do with the AVI file format. So give this some thought. Innovati suggests posting them on youtube...which is certainly another alternative. However, if you go this route remember the following: 1) I think youtube has a 10-minute video length limit. If not, I thought they had SOME time-limit on the length of your video. Thus, you will have to either chop it up into pieces or try some other hosting. 2) READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE CLOSELY! As I recall, ownership of the video remains yours, however, you are giving youtube certain license to use your video without any compensation to you. I do not recall the details, so you will want to read their terms of service closely. Maybe it will not matter to you...but then again it may matter to them. Is this stuff you shot and edited? No big deal..unless...you used commercial music on the sound track without permission (read: without paying royalties for it). All sorts of "gotchas" to snag the unwary. Just read the TOS closely and you should be fine. Hope this helps...and good luck!