Delivering Large Videos

the best method

[mcjohnson]

I have a prospective client who wants to serve up feature-length videos to paying customers.

The method of delivery is the biggest challenge. YouTube, Google, etc render uploaded video as Flash, which is probably the most cross-platform compatible.

But the on-the-fly conversion MAY prove to be tricky.

Any thoughts?

[Brett_Tabke]

> But the on-the-fly conversion MAY prove to be tricky.

why? Shouldn't be.

[mcjohnson]

Because I haven't really seen any scripts that do this; is it that easy? What type of script would handle that kind of conversion?

[thecoalman]

MPEG1 is the most compatible but due to the larger bitrates required is not a very good choice. My personal choice is WMV, if not flash would be next.

I've seen some scripts and applications for converting video server side but that is only practical to do once. If by "on the fly" you mean converting a video for each request you might as well forget that. Video processing requires a huge amount of CPU.