Forum Moderators: not2easy
Also, is shockwave still a viable format?
I would also like to know if there are recent stats on typical download speeds for dial-up & cable users.
I have a few clients requesting video in their website and I want to make sure the most number of people can access them.
That is all I can tell you from my reports.
We usually provide multiple file types, the two most popular are Windows Media and QuickTime.... you will cover well over 90% with both of those
I guess the best way is to put something up and test it to see what happens... lucky I have the luxury to do that this time.
However I'm finding that I need to make the video with flash 8 encoder to get a quality vs size i'm happy with, so I'm hoping that most people that have flash have flash 8, as I don't think its backwards compatible. I'm relying on the fact that if they don't, they will be happy to upgrade as they are already familiar with flash. Can anyone shed light on this assumption?
Not sure what you mean about the other codecs messing up ones system, I haven't heard about that...
1) Instead of just having your watermark in the bottom corner of the playing video, turn that watermark into a working link back to your website. That way if another webmaster lifts your video, they will be stealing an active link back to your site. Free advertising.
2) Add your own controls so it matches your websites theme. Looks more professional.
3) Add a timer and static image to the first frame explaining what the video is about. That way they know that the video is actively loading and it gives them something to read while they wait. Instead of the blank screen the other video players show.
4) If you use credits, instead of adding them to the video which makes them hard to read with compression, use static images at the end of the video.
Re quicktime i have always had it install bundled with other software, so I don't know, but I agree that the flash install is very quick and easy.
Good point about adding controls and all that. I think i'm a convert, and I've just used flash 8 to do a progressive download video on a clients' site and I'm pretty happy with it.
I'd have to do some more research on how flash streams before I would use it for streaming. The flash streaming seems relatively new, compared to the others, and exy... not that I really know much about streaming - I understand how it's supposed to work but I've never setup a server or anything. Is flash still good for streaming?
Is flash still good for streaming?
The streaming is controlled by you. You can begin the video playing at any point you want. For example, I have a highly compressed 7 minute video. As soon as the viewer gets 3 1/2 minutes loaded (or half) I start the video and hopefully it will finish downloading before it catches up to itself. I also have a 48 second video that I let it load the first 40 seconds before playing. That gives the viewer 40 seconds to finish downloading the last 8 seconds.
Streaming with the other players is limited to O/S and other factors. If you want flash to stream, it will stream.
if you are embedding the video in the page, tho, there will be issues with the wmv9 activex implementation on firefox browsers... so flash 8 may be worth looking into.
wrt to quality, keep in mind that the wmv9 audio will be better than anything in either flash or quicktime... so make your tradeoffs where you have to.
if you are looking to serve up video on a larger scale, windows media server is the best choice by far.
Flash is a good idea but to cover more users you would need to add windows media player and Quick Time formats
Flash works with *nix, windows and apple by installing a small plugin that takes less than a minute for even 56k users. You would only lose an insignificant number of users by using flash only.
is that the bogus npd "survey" data that macromedia bases their garbage marketshare numbers on? the "survey" is comprised of only 2,000 participants, out of over a billion computers on the web... it's meaningless.
flash 8 doesn't have near the market share that the wmv player has, because flash 8 is not bundled with winxp, like it used to be... there is no need to download anything to watch a wmv video clip, because it's a very mature product with dominant market share.
your point about the small download size of the flash player is a good one, tho... that really helps to promote the format.
however, this isn't a thread about helping to promote flash... you should be putting video on the web based on media player penetration, codec quality, media server capabilities, etc.
i would not use quicktime for any reason... stick with wmv 9 and/or flash 8(assuming that you can find a decent 2-pass encoder for it).
opps, you did state that it was your stats for your servers.
it's not clear what you are saying... for instance, perhaps you are simply putting up a lot more flash than anything else... or perhaps you are including flash graphics instead of just flash video... i don't see where it's an indicator of overall format penetration on the 'net.
