[David Eadenhall]

Dear Daniel

May I trouble you with just one LAST question?

If I opt for proper streaming, is there anyway to be able to control the quality that all my viewer’s will see, or will it be their internet connection speed that holds full control over that? I just want to know what my viewers will be seeing.

We are offering free video clips to advertise our purchasable videos. If we stream a video and their connection is bad, the quality of our video clip wont look good at all and might subsequently put them off buying our full videos. This is why im so concerned with the output quality.

Thank you again my friend

Dan

[David Eadenhall]

“As the file is being progressively downloaded, it’s already there on the hard drive, the Quicktime player then just enables the saving (moving) of it to a convienient location for the user.”

Is this possible to set up on my server, or is this a very complicated process to go through? This surely would be an ideal solution.

Take care my friend

Dan

[David Eadenhall]

Hi there Daniel

I cant believe how quickly you responded!!!!!

I have Flowplayer on my server that I am currently testing with our videos. Is this s a good choice?

Those Apple trailers consistently stun me, the quality, the content, the immediacy etc – sensational! What sort of compression techniques do they use, its unbelievable?

How have they been able to allow the users to only use the bandwidth once by watching and saving the file in one go – that sounds like the perfect solution?

Thank you so much my friend

Dan

[David Eadenhall]

Hi there Daniel and Chris

I would ideally like to make my videos available via progressive download as the idea that I can control the quality that ALL my viewers will see, really appeals to me. I wouldnt really be happy knowing that if I stream my material, some viewers will think my videos are poor quality because they dont realise that the speed of their connection is making these videos look bad. The picture quality of my videos is very important really, as its a shame to destroy the quality from our HD source.

I would also like to make my videos available for download to a hardrive (in a zip folder) as well as for immediate viewing online. That way I can be confident that whatever set up our user will have, they will be able to actually view the videos in some way.

My question is if I offer a video for progressive download and also for download via zip, am I effectively going to double my bandwidth usage (users might progressively view the video online, then decide to download a copy to their hardrive). If I decided to stream the video instead, so the user could still view the video right away before deciding whether to also download a zip copy, would that use up alot less bandwidth?

If one views progressive downloads in a normal browser, can you still have the option of being able to maximise the video to full screen, or are you limited to the exact frame size of your original video file in the browser?

Once again, thank you ever so much for all your help over the last week, Im just so appreciative to you!

Dan

[David Eadenhall]

Dear Chris and Daniel

I just cant believe this site – the fact that two pros are taking the time to explain all this to me. I have spent months reading and re-reading up on all this and have not been able to take in this info. Its only since you both have taken the time to help me that I can finally understand this. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but thank you ever so much.

Well I have a server with a Wowza media streaming server installed. The reason that we went for a media streaming server is so that my viewers would be able to ‘seek’ to any part of the video and have it download from that point. I like the idea of being able to set my own bit rate to force the video to play at, so that I know how the end result for my viewers will look. So the sacrifice of this is that users with slower connections will have to wait longer before being able to start viewing if I go the progressive route?

Can one use the progressive download option with a media streaming server, or is that only for real streaming?

Am I right to believe that using a VBR is better than a CBR for progressive download?

I have tried compressing videos using Final Cut Pro, Quicktime Pro, Mpeg Streamclip and Adobe Media Encoder but there has been no apparent setting to choose whether my final compressed video is going to be for progressive download or true streaming – am I missing a setting here or do other parameters govern this? Maybe I have overlooked something here. I only seem to be able to set frame rates, data rates, frame sizes, quality, deinterlacing, CBR/VBR etc.

Thank you again

Dan

[David Eadenhall]

Thank you so much Chris and Daniel for all this amazing information advice and knowledge. I am incredibly appreciative that you have spent the time in explaining all this to me.

Its so good to actually speak to people who are experts in this field as I was getting so desperate of what to do.

One last thing if I may: What is the difference between progressive download and streaming. When i am compressing my video, how do I know what type of download I am compressing for (progressive or streaming)? I have a streaming server set up so that my users can use the ‘seek’ function, will both these types of download be compatible with this, or is there one in particular that i should go for?

I really feel that now I can start doing proper tests on my videos and know what my parameters are finally.

Thank you so, so much again

Daniel

[David Eadenhall]

Hi there Daniel

Thank you so much for your response. I have chosen to use mp4 format for both streaming and download. I would love to know how its possible to calculate the viewer’s connection speed. Can you point me anywhere – this sounds just what i need!

Thank you again

Dan

[David Eadenhall]

Hi there Craig

Thank you so much for your response – I am so thankful that you have taken the time to respond and help.

My target audience is quite hard to sum up as it will be made up of so many individuals that will be accessing the videos on our servers from different backgrounds of computers. By that I mean some users will be computer fanatics and some will have basic set ups. I guess that makes things so complicated.

I have seen so many sites that embed these HD videos and they stream so well and smoothly. I just want to find a happy medium that allow as many users successfully watch these videos and be satisfied.

I have since learnt that the bit rate that I encode a video by relates to the minimum requirement that my user must have in his internet connection speed. I was able to get a fairly decent result with bit rates of about 1500kbps upwards but was being told by so many people that my bit rate was way too high and that I should be looking more towards 600-800kbps. Either I am doing something very wrong but I cannot for the life of me get anything even barely acceptable looking at that bit rate. It just looks totally blocky and jerky.

By my tests in compression, I am getting file sizes to be about 10mb per minute. Is that sounding high to you?

Craig, again thank you for all your help and I hope im not taking up too much of your time.

Dan