Streaming Video Editors

[kevinj]

I'm getting ready to purchase RealProducer Plus to take DVDs I have and convert footage to streaming files. Has anyone worked with this program or have any other possibilities they'd recommend?

[pmkpmk]

I hope you don't plan to stream material from (copyrighted) DVD's on your website? This will for sure take you into deep, deep trouble - unless you're the producer of these DVD's yourself (in which case I would suggest to convert for the master tape copy).

[kevinj]

Thanks for the advice. This is a demo DVD for a band that I play in and the tunes are our originals. So we're ok on this.

[pmkpmk]

Do you have a contract with a label already? If yes, contact them FIRST.

But if it's ALL done by yourself (your band) and no rights of third parties are involved (your own tunes or cover versions?), then you should be OK.

At the moment, you can stream in three ways:

- Apple Quicktime
- RealNetworks
- Windows Media

All streaming solutions offer basically the same, but I seem to notice that Windows Media is getting more marketshare nowadays. If you want to address Mac- and Windows-Users alike, Quicktime is the best solution, but there's also Real-Clients and Windows Media-Clienst for the Mac. However my impression is that Mac users are more reluctant to install anything else than Windows users are.

If you don't like Microsoft but want to stay PC-centric, RealNetworks is the solution to go, but my impression is that RealNetworks is always on the egde to extinction. But that's only my feeling.

The Windows Media Codec 9 does a pretty good job even at low bandwidths. I'm not a perticulary Microsoft fan, but I did the last encodings with Windows Media because of the quality.

[benihana]

i havent worked with it yet, but the video in flashmx2004 professional is supposed to be good.