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Video
for my web site: Which is best?
Dec
16, 1999
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Q:
I need to make videos for my web site. Knowing that
I must make them as small as possible, which format
is the fastest and least likely to crash.
QuickTime?, Real Video? anything?
BC.
A:
There have been a few comparisons of image quality
of compressed formats. One you might check out is
at New Media magazine:
newmedia.com/newmedia/99/01/labreport/Showtime.html
This
was actually a review of streaming technologies,
but some of what it says applies to non-streaming
video as well.
Fastest
is probably best determined by "smallest file"
however be aware that this isn't the only meaning
of "fastest." The Sorenson compressor (one of the
QuickTime compressors) does an extremely good job
of compressing video, but it's very processor
intensive so it's possible older computers may have
trouble playing a Sorenson encoded clip flawlessly
if it's a comparatively high data rate movie.
That's probably not a consideration if you are
distributing the movie over the web, but it does
add to the complication when thinking about how to
prepare your movies!
Least
likely to crash? I don't know where you would get
an answer to that question. From personal
experience I can say that I've had much less
trouble with QuickTime than with Real Video, but
that's a personal experience based on two users
with four machines. Hardly a big data
set!
If
you have the capability, you might consider
encoding the same clip in two or three formats and
provide it that way to your users and let them
decide. You should then keep track of the traffic
and over time decide whether to converge on one
format, or remain supporting multiples.
Q:
My web site has several QuickTime videos . Two
questions:
1-
Occasionally one of the videos causes my the
computer to crash. What could be the cause of this?
It has occurred on several different
computers.
2-
What is the preferred non QuickTime format. I had
hoped that QT would be more universally
incorporated but it still has not caught on
reliably in the PC world. Which of the others would
you recommend. Thanks.
I
don't know why a video would be causing computers
to crash. You probably need to do some tests to try
and find out why; Does it crash every time, or only
occasionally? (if the latter, then it's probably a
memory related problem.) Does the video start
playing and the machine crash half way through, or
does it crash as soon as it tries to play it? Does
it crash in the Movie Player application as well as
in the browser? Does it crash in both Internet
Explorer and Netscape? Has the computer crashed
playing other videos from other sites?
I
don't think there is really a preferred video
format. I would recommend doing what CNN does;
provide your video in three formats; Windows Media,
Real Video and QuickTime. You should also provide
multiple versions of the video for different
transmission speeds. Then after a few months you
can examine your server logs and see which clips
are the most popular. If you find that a particular
format or transmission size is hardly ever used,
then you might consider doing away with
it.
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