Embedding Video Saves Bandwidth?

[funnynation]

If you put a video on your website and embed it. Will it save you more bandwidth than letting people download it? If it does, what's the difference? Thanks.

[Teknorat]

The only difference will be that most browsers will take longer to get their act together. Same bandwidth used regardless.

[jcoronella]

I think you generally save bandwidth when you stream it.
Streaming pushes the movie out as the user watches it, and you need a special server set up for it. Both streaming and linking to the file using standard http can be embedded in the page.

[Teknorat]

Streaming uses more bandwidth. The amount of data getting pushed at once is going to be great.

[uncle_bob]

Streaming a file will use more bandwidth than just downloading it, however, this is only the case if the user watches the video to the end. If they only watch a bit of the video, then streaming will result in lower bandwidth.

So you have to ask yourself - how engaging is your video?

[jcoronella]

Teknorat and uncle_bob are correct: I meant it generally saves BW because the users pulls data as they watch it and there are usually a fair number of interupted streams.

Your mileage may vary.

[HughMungus]

you need a special server set up for it

Only if you want to do something more than progressive download (i.e., it plays while downloading).

If you're worried about bandwidth, just let people download it.