[thelist] Re: video on the web, how?

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

> Actually this seems to be a reason to use Flash rather than one of the
> other formats, since more users have Flash than any of the others.
> According to Macromedia's statistics (survey conducted Sept. 2004) --
> http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/ -- well
> over 90% of users have a version of the Flash plugin that supports
> Flash
> video. Compare that to about 60% for QuickTime and RealPlayer and just
> over 50% for Windows Media Player. And, of course, for anyone who
> doesn't have it, the Flash plugin is a much smaller and thus much
> faster
> download than any of the others.

I'm kinda hoping that there's a video format out there (Mpeg4?) that
QT, RP, and WMP all play. Together, they'd cover 90% I'm sure, and we
could then claim that a) we're standards based, and b) the user can
view our site using the tools they prefer, rather than their tools
being dictated by the author.

What happens if the user wants to view the video on their mobile phone?

Also, I don't necessarily think Macromedia's statistics would stand
rigorous assessment. Their company's survival depends on that figure
being hunky dory.

OK, that's me talking, now here's an expert source that completely
contradicts me, O'Reilly's web design in a nutshell 2001. Niederst
says, for a long playing video choose a streaming format, RealMedia,
Windows Media or Streaming QuickTime.

Mpeg-1 isn't streaming, but was originally popular because you could
create it on a UNIX system. WMP and QT players both play Mpegs.

Apparently you can place embedded QuickTime movies into a page just
like an image, and it's bundled but he major browsers which she
mentions as IE3 and Navigator 3. So. I bought this book very recently
and it's well old. So take all this with a pinch of salt.

However there's no mention of Flash with video, so Flash's support for
video may well be a recent thing.

J

J