[thelist] Streaming video

Pierre-Henri Lavigne lavigne at getphuture.com
Wed Aug 9 17:14:01 CDT 2006


On Wednesday 09 August 2006 17:16, Jay Blanchard wrote:
> I have been googling and reading for two days on streaming video from a
> web site hoping that the age old question of format would have been
> solved. I now feel more lost than ever. Multiple versions? Convert all
> to Flash video? Can I get some advice on how to sort through the maze?
>
> Thanks!

I think it's difficult to answer the question. First I would advise you to 
know what your host supports (rtsp - mms  -... streaming), your original file 
format (avi ?) and the target public.

In 2003, I searched a good faq to put online videos for a music band. I was a 
newbie and it was for an embedded popup player. I had to test everything 
myself (WMP, RP, QT). Finally I used Real Player. To my mind it's the only 
one that can be launched under Windows, Mac and Linux / Unix, embeddable in 
their default browser (IE, Safari, Konqueror) and a good plugin for Mozilla 
too. I used the free unlimited demo version of Helix Encoder. Because of 
limited options, it took me some hours with Virtual Dumb to resize .avi 
before encoding. About accessibility, it's better to use them with SMIL 
files.

About flash, the flash plugin version 7 is minimum required to read .flv or 
something like this. The version 7 is still beta with most unix 
distributions. No WMP or QT for Linux / Unix. So I can't advise you to use 
one of them. That's my choice. Work requirements are different and I had the 
chance to use Flash 8 for videos a few month ago. Really good but if I had to 
suggest it to a client, it would be for sites like 
http://www.habitatfieldlog.com

To conclude an article on Evolt would be welcome.
You can tell me if I'm wrong and I hope this will help you a little

Cheers

-- 
Pierre-Henri Lavigne
lavigne at getphuture.com
Tel: +33 (0)6.18.75.32.67



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