>> what fomat have you found to have the most widespread >> ease of use/acceptance.
I host hundreds of video files and serve about 1.5 to 2 terabytes a month from www.halomovies.org a machinima website. I typically host them in WMP9 (.WMV) and QuickTime (.MOV) formats and also in Flash Movie formats (.FLV). All the above formats are capable of progressive downloads (WMV and MOV and FLV) however I found that the bandwidth issues were such that it was better to place the WMP9 and QuickTime files into Zip files and deliver them to the desktop. That actually cut our bandwidth requirements nearly in half. We still have .FLV files that play in a browser using a simple Flash Player. What I found has more to do with social behavior than technical issues. When we presented them in the web browser with progressive downloads the users would watch (download) them several times over a period of a week, but when they downloaded them to their PC in a zip archive they would download them once. This bandwidth savings was very important since it is a hobby (no money) website I pay for. >> what are the best programs out there for compressing those into >> whatever that best format is I use Sorenson's Squeeze program to convert, compress and re-encode the videos. For progressive in browser videos The Flash Movie format is pretty compact for progressive downloads. >> does anyone know of hosts which provide reliable "media" hosting? Any major host can do media hosting provided they have the bandwidth to support it. Like I said my little hobby website uses 1.5 to 2 terabytes a month in bandwidth. With media files bandwidth is the issue. 95% of the files I serve are done via FTP because I archive them into zip files. As an example of what can happen, one of the people I host for (www.thisspartanlife.com) a machinima was written up on www.gismodo.com and www.boingboing.net on the same day. For about three hours we saturated an OC3 connection with downloads until I scaled back the bandwidth on the FTP server. Best Regards, Dennis Powers UXB Internet- A Website Design and Hosting Company 690 Wolcott Road - P.O. Box 6028 Wolcott, CT 06716 Tel: 203-879-2844 http://www.uxbinternet.com http://dennis.uxb.net -----Original Message----- From: Jim Wright [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 3:59 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: OT:video files A few questions about hosting video files for those of you who have done it... 1. what fomat have you found to have the most widespread ease of use/acceptance. I'd like to embed these in the page. Any particular CODECs/compression that work best...these will be for product demos...the size does not need to be enormous. 2. assuming that you are provided with fairly large AVI files, what are the best programs out there for compressing those into whatever that best format is(see question 1). 3. As the clients who want to do this generally have low-priced shared hosting situations, I am looking at having the video hosted at some service external to their main host...does anyone know of hosts which provide reliable "media" hosting? -- Jim Wright Wright Business Solutions [EMAIL PROTECTED] 919-417-2257 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:234544 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
