Sorry for my ignorance but video is not my deal. I'm really not sure of the difference between streaming media and just a simple AVI file. Is there a difference? What type of file format(s) would be used for streaming media and what is required to play the videos? Thanks!
oh hey there, I found a couple of great resources using a new tool called Google. I think it's only been out for a short DECADE so I'm not surprised if you haven't heard of it yet. What is an AVI? Why it's a Microsoft made format (means its of the lowest possible quality) that was written at the height of Mankinds ability to encode video: November 1992. And to think that in the past 16 years we have never, ever been able to surpass what wasn't even the best encoding format at the time. *sigh* how I long for the good old days. It came out 8 months after Windows 3.1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Interleave Now, something really interesting you might want to check out: http://tinyurl.com/6mycxm And, further reading from some small site you may never have heard of called 'Wikipedia', you should bookmark this one because it's hard to find and every once in a while it has some half-decent content on topics that's likel written be the people who actually made these standards. But what would they know, like I said it's hit and miss, sometimes it's the best source on the internet for these things, sometimes it's just the second best if they have a really good website. On streaming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media On MOV format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mov#QuickTime_file_format I hope these links help you, the information is really not that hard to find if you spend just a couple of seconds and a search engine (like that brand new decade old Google).
Thank you both for your help, I really appreciate it! We need to have a few videos that are being created by a marketing company added to our intranet site. They are wondering what format would be good the best for use but I'm not sure what to tell them. I know we do not have streaming media capabilities so what would be the best formats to have them deliver the videos in? I'm told these are for an interactive orientation. Here is what I was told they would be used for: "The orientation will be interactive, include video clips and a documenting quiz at its conclusion." I know that is not much information but that's all I have right now. Thanks!
Sounds like your typical marketing company to me, I work for a company that does video streaming and its still an area where most people are still pretty clueless. As for what format, well it very much depends on what your going to do with it and at what bit rates your going to do it at. Given your saying interactivity, I'm guessing there is going to be Flash involved, if there is I would go for either H.264 in an MP4 wrapper (Not quicktime), or Flash VP6, and I would choose between them on what bitrate you want to encode them at, anything less than 1Mbit VP6 more H.264. To give you a few examples, low quality YouTube is around 300Kbit, high quality I think 600Kbit, BBC iPlayer was 500Kbit but they do really quality encodes. If your going Silverlight for interactivity, then I would encode using VC-1 in a Windows Media wrapper. A few of the mistakes people make when people put video on their site Mistake progressive download for real streaming A sure tell of progressive is drag the time line slider to past the bit thats downloaded, proper streaming will jump straight there, progressive will need to download to that point. Depending on the type of video your doing this can be a real pain, and a waste of bandwidth, if your video is meant to be viewed start to finish its not a major problem. Dont do their sums as to the amount of bandwidth this may consume Video uses up very large amounts of bandwidth, your site can quickly grind to a halt very quickly, or you end up with a huge bandwidth bill. Encode at too high a bit rate Some people go for quality over download speed, and then half your viewers switch off because its buffering all the time. Encode at too low a bit rate Quick to download but looks rubbish and not giving a very professional impression. Use cheap or free tools to create their video Not always a bad thing, but normally professional quality video means professional quality tools. Ironically one of the exceptions to the rule is the open source version of the H.264 codec x.264 which is one of the best around. Jen
"As of August 2008, x264 implements more H.264 features than any other encoder." haha nice, I sure did not know that! Thanks for the info JenniP, it looks like the guru has spoken! A wonderfully informative post. For 60$ a month you can purchase Vimeo+, which allows you to upload up to 2GB of HD video a month, and embed it in a customized flash player at normal or full HD quality on any website. Vimeo has arguably the best quality of any of the streaming video hosting sites, and it maintains a highly professional appearance. Without a doubt if I was doing any amount of video hosting in the future (which I plan in the next 6 months to be starting) I wouldn't waste a moment and would get Vimeo+
x264 is great, we were trying it against one of the best commercial ones from MainConcept, and we were getting better results with x264. The great thing about x264 is that its included in most freeware video converters. When talking to people about video, one of the hardest part is explaining the difference in codecs and even the difference in different versions of the same codec. Jen