MPEG Files

are they better than AVI?

[newnewbie1]

If someone was going to to a video clip for the web, why would they choose to make a MPEG movie instead of an AVI movie? I thought AVI was just kind of the most common web videa format.

Why players do you use for MPEG?

THANKS!

[Chuma]

AVI files are native to Windows and I don't know if they can be played on other operating systems.

MPEG files also tend to have better compression (although I have seen some really bad ones) and so are smaller.

Thanks.

[newnewbie1]

How do you play MPEG files? Will Windows Media software play them? Do I use the <EMBED> tag?

THX!

[chris_f]

Hi newnewbie1,

Window Media Player can play MPEG's.

Chris

[Knoopss]

Make sure you use MPEG1 - it's still the best solution for max compatibility.But for smaller files you should use a streaming format like Windows or Real media.
a

[Jon_King]

A bit of a side, here is a very thorough AVI paper:

*ttp://www.jmcgowan.com/avi.html

[HughMungus]

MPEG=most compatible format. Windows, Mac, Linux. Also, no codec issues.

[mil2k]

I love Mpegs. Have better compression and quality going. The future will be divx(if the codecs issue is solved) IMHO.

[blackcat]

I've tried MPEG's and AVI's and have the same problem with both. I think it must be my coding. Usually when you are on a website and view an AVI or MPEG, you get a message that says "buffering." My vids just start right up and are all bumpy and jerky because they play faster than they load. Then, to see the movie correctly, you need to replay them. Also, in both AVI and MPEG, only about half the movie I've placed on the website is shown. Can anyone advise how to fix this? All I know is the simplest HTML.

[choster]

If you have 10 second clip which is 1MB in size, you could very roughly estimate that the audio and video frames would require bandwidth of about 100K/s to view in real time, or you need to buffer the stream for much longer. That is, perhaps the video you are providing is too large/high quality to be streamed at your targeted bandwidth; you could reduce the image quality, or the number of frames, or the audio bit rate or channels, or the picture size, etc. to reduce the size of the file and thus the bandwidth required. Or you could move to a RealMedia or Windows Media server, which allow you to encode different bitrates directly into the file and let the server automatically negotiate the correct bandwidth.

[blackcat]

Thanks for your advice. I'm going to start by reducing the image quality and see how that works. I also tried playing both the MPEGs and AVIs on different players and found that Quicktime seems to work best. It's the only one that loads the whole thing first, then plays it. As long as the audience knows it's going to be a bit of a wait, I'd rather do this than have it play in jerky-mode. Since my site visitors set their player preferences on their own computers, is there a way to force the use of Quicktime using HTML code?

[HughMungus]

Or you could use the WM or Real formats and just put them on your webserver. The problem there, again, is compatability. Some people can't or won't install the Real or WM player.

What's needed is an MPEG format that buffers BEFORE playing.

[blackcat]

I have installed QuickTime and set it as my preference for playing mpegs, but my pre-existing mpegs still play using Media Player. When I go to the original mpeg file and right click, it says (in bold print) "Play with Media Player." I don't know how to change that setting. I can right click on the mpeg and go to "Open" and choose QuickTime, but I need to have it automatically play using QuickTime. How do I change that setting? I thought when you right-clicked, these files usually said "Open with..." then gave you an option to select the player of choice, and if you didn't choose a specific player, it would play on whatever you had set up as your default. Help!

[HughMungus]

Try SHIFT - RIGHT CLICK.

Alternatively, you can open your favorite media player and drag the file into the player.