Chris Seberino wrote:
I suspect that that is because video takes up a lot of bandwidth.
Hopefully BitTorrent will take care of this snag.
Well, yes and no. BitTorrent is pretty good about disseminating 'bits'
of data. And, if all you are doing is moving video data in the form of
files it should work okay but if you are intending to watch the video as
a stream then BitTorrent is not the way to go for now. This is where
being a hardware geek comes in handy. If you are using software i.e.
BitTorrent to make the hardware move data it is like the old
multiplexing schemes where no one cares what order packets of data are
transmitted across the network because the intelligence built into the
packets contains the instructions for reassembling the data into the
proper order once they reach their destination. Streaming video depends
on a stream of data arriving in the correct order or really powerful
hardware that can capture the out-of-order data packets, store them
until they have all arrived, and then assemble them in the correct order
and present them as an uninterrupted stream to your video card, etc.
The Apple Macs have always been better at video because they were
proprietary hardware optimized for video (with a high price tag that was
typically 3 to 4 times what a PC cost) running proprietary software that
was optimized for the hardware. But until the G4 and G5 processors they
were still not powerful enough to make streaming video work all of the
time.
What is it that is frustrating you? Is it the ability to create your own
videos, to stream live video, or to convert video in other formats like
VHS to DVD, or something else?
I have used Windows Media Player (my least favorite), QuickTime for
movie trailers, and Real Player for most streaming video. I use DivX for
most video which I do not have to stream.
What is frustrating is the proliferation of video formats. When you
want to listen to audio you know you'll encounter MP3 99% of the
time with some WAV thrown in. You shouldn't have to learn so many
formats for video. I'm not sure why these extra formats even
exist if MPEG4 is so great and the universal format eveyone says it is.
The short answer as to why the 'extra' formats exist is that MPEG4 is
only the most recent "universal format". Each time someone like you or
me gets frustrated and comes up with a better or newer format the other
formats do not go away right away.
As you have discovered it takes time to learn how to use the new format
and to convert your existing files to the new format. This is where not
having a lot of experience (read having spent years limping along with
the other older formats) is to your advantage.
This is very similar to the development of Linux. I started with
Slackware Linux back in the very early 90's. Back then you had to know a
lot about hardware because "plug and play" was a pipe dream.
It wasn't uncommon to hand code your video driver or to install from the
command line over and over again until you got things just right.
These days installing Linux using a GUI is not unlike installing MS
Windows. In fact Linux has grown to the point now where if you don't
have fairly new hardware it won't run.
I put together and ran an old 486 66MHz Linux box which my company used
for over 10 years as its main file and print server through the 1990's
because it did a better job than the piece of shit Pentium Windows NT
box they sent for me to use.
I had so much trouble with the NT box that when I slipped in the 486
Linux box running Redhat 5 everyone thought that we had spent big bucks
to upgrade it to a decent computer.
Rick
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