Web Video: Answers To Some Basic Questions

HOW CAN I USE VIDEO ON THE WEB?

Want to put video on your website, but don't know where to start? Here are answers to the most common questions.

Video Hosting FAQ

Do I need a Special Server for Streaming Video? No, you can have streaming video from your website without having to pay extra for a video server (e.g. RealServer). All the streaming video on this website is hosted on a regular web server. So if you already have a website, you can easily add streaming video.

What is the advantage of using a Video Server? A video server allows a video clip to automatically scale up or down in quality depending on the available bandwidth. What this means is that if there is suddenly high traffic on your site and the amount of bandwidth throughput is reduced, the video will automatically switch to a lower quality.

How much space will video take on my server? A 5 minute video clip encoded to play on cable or DSL modem (high quality) will take about 8 MB of space. A 5 minute clip encode for 56k modem will take about 1 MB.

Streaming Video VS. Download Video

What is Download? Download video means that the whole video file is downloaded from the Internet to your computer before it starts to play back.

What is Streaming? Streaming Video is a technology that allows you to watch video almost instantly on the Internet without having to download the whole file to your computer first.

Streaming Video FAQ:

How It Works: Your computer downloads the first few seconds of video (called a buffer) to your computer; then the video then starts playing as it continues to download in the background.

Pros: Allows for almost instant playback -- video on demand.

Cons: The audio/video quality is not as high for slower modems; the video may sometimes pause or stutter as web traffic congestion can interrupt the download.

Most Popular Format: RealPlayer

Who Uses It: News, Product/Service sites, Entertainment Why Use It? When your audience isn't willing to wait very long to see content and long delays will loose them Ð which actually is the majority of people.

Download FAQ:

How It Works: Downloads the whole video to your computer; then the video plays back after the download is complete.

Pros: video/audio can be higher quality whether you have a fast or slow modem; web congestion will not affect the quality of the playback.

Cons: depends on the file size, but takes a long time to download; viewer has to really want to see the video to have the patience to download the whole file first, casual surfers won't bother.

Most Popular Format: QuickTime

Who Uses It: Movie Companies for movie trailers (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings)

Why Use It? Anytime when the quality of the video/audio is vital, and your audience is willing to wait longer for better quality i.e. fans of cult status movies

Reprinted with permission from Swing Media, Inc., offering video production services for business and the Web, including video encoding.