Downloading

[Bradley Miller]

Sorry, nothing definitive. I need to get that Wusage program running on the server again!

To answer your question though, the QT high rez download and small rez download are generally the most popular. MPEGs coming in after that, then the medium QT. Obviously DV was the least popular, but I do believe the last training video got a couple hundred downloads of the DV version.

[Adam Brooks]

People use what they have.
Most Mac users will use QT
Most people who have windows machines use windows media
and everybody uses Realplayer.

I think that what you use to stream should be decided by who do you think will view the video. When I stared the icanstream.tv web site. We decided that we wanted everyone who wanted to see somthing would be able too.

I created media in all 3 formats in both broadband and narrowband versions.
Thus creating 6 files for each video. Extra work and storage for sure but it got the highest number of viewers.

Broadband 320x240 15 fps
Narrowband 160x120 7.5fps

We kept the video to under 5 nimutes and max megabytes to 15megs for broadband
And about 2megabytes for the narrowband.

Adam

[Adam Lawrence]

The thing I found out when doing online video is that some poeple
are still half way computer literate.

When showing video on the web you should first think about these poeple
and prioritise for there needs. One example would be to make sure
you have a variation of sizes for download and formats as well,,just as
Adam had said above. Quicktime for the Macs and MPG, AVI or WMV for the PC's. I dont recomend using RealPlayer formats, Most poeple dont have
Realplayer, even though it is free to get it, the site displays the product as if
it needed to be purchase for download, and makes it a point to descreetly
display the link to the FREE version. Plus most poeple still run a 56k, which in turn will result in lengthy download times for realplayer and intsallation
just to view a video clip.

Also i usually make my videos streamable not downloadable, a sign of the movies progress amediatly after clicking the link.

I make sure they appear in the same window as the link, in opposition to
pop-up windows. I do this becuase poeple are now instinctively closing out pop-up windows before they are even loaded due to web based advertisments and such.

Its always best to treat your web work as if you had monkeys for an audience.............. Then your users shouldnt run into major problems while navigating your site.

[Bradley Miller]

I must also throw in a bit on Real player. Besides the video and audio looking like CRAP, there are problems with the program itself. I have performed a few tests with a friend of mine and with a clean formatted drive and everything installed, the systems run perfectly. Once we add that infernal Real player to the computer, all sorts of odd glitches start occuring. Re-Ghosting the drive to "pre-Real player" state clears ALL of the problems every time.

I know there will be people who disagree and I'm not posting this to start any kind of argument, but my experience has shown that Real player has SOMETHING in it's programming that Windows does not like. As for me, I just don't like the quality of it and refuse to distribute anything I do in that format on the basis of quality alone.

[Joe Redifer]

I agree that Real is not acceptable in even its best quality. But Real isn't really my main issue. I hate all streaming video in general. It just looks waaaay too bad, even with broadband. No way would I ever submit anything I've created to such a horrible A/V treatment that is streaming video. At least with downloads everybody gets the same quality (depending on which version they choose, of course). If someone on a broadband connection downloads a 12 meg file, it will look exactly the same to the person on a 28.8 dial up who downloads that same 12 meg file. Streaming video is unreliable and does not always achieve consistant results.

[Rob Lohman]

QuickTime streaming can look very very good (especially with the
Sorenson codec), but, and this is a big but, only for users on the
fastest connections (300 kb/s +). I prefer download as well. I'd
rather download for 2 hours then watch a crappy version. But
this ofcourse, is just my 2 cents.

[Ed Smith]

Realplayer is not a very good picture compared to QT, plus you are bombarded by realmedia e-mails.

But then you have to ask yourself why do the BBC use it to stream live news feeds over the net?

Just a thought,

Ed Smith

[Keith Loh]

Real sucks, to be sure. The quality of the video can be good, but everyone I know who installs RealPlayer immediately regrets how intrusive it is. For developers, when you use Real you are putting someone else's ads on your site. If you want to white label Real not only can it cost a lot of money but it is a long, involved process.

[Keith Loh]

Actually Real does *pay* large high profile sites to use its product for the extra brand recognition.

[Jeff Farris]

As a consumer of web video (both stream and download), I can tell you that when I see the word "Real", I immediately leave the site, never to return. It took me months to clean all the crap out of my system that Real downloaded before I knew them for what they are.

As a future provider of web video (still deciding between stream and download), I will not provide a Realplayer version. I plan on starting with two versions of QT, one for dial-up and one for broadband users. If I see the need or get statistically significant requests for WM, I will add that, too.

[Rob Lohman]

I agree on Real, I don't check out real footage as well. Since a
year I haven't gotten it installed anymore. I prefer quicktime
as well, but I don't prefer streamed. There are a couple of
reasons:

1. I like to get the highest quality version, which is not always
possible when streaming (if my company line is very busy for
example). I download will take longer, but gets me this.

2. If it is any good, I like to keep it and see it again sometime.
Only possible when you can download

3. Download can be continued. Streaming might be, but is
more difficult

4. I might not want to watch it now. I only have a dialup
connection at home at the moment. I use my coprorate
leased line for the heavy stuff. Most of the time I want
to watch the downloads at home though.

So if you want to go down the streaming route, please include
downloadable versions as well. This should be very easy
with QuickTime since you are basically offering the same files
if I am not mistaken. I rarely watch any streaming stuff, I always
tend to download.

This, ofcourse, is just me.