I just joined too, and this looks like a great list.
I actually use both Flash video and QT video, depending on the audience and purpose. If I already have a Flash site in place, I just add Flash video to the site. If it is not a Flash site to begin with, I tend to use QuickTime.
I use QuickTime in the "fast start" mode that Hugh suggests, and find that most people can access the movies fairly quickly. If you don't have the QT RTSP streaming server, you'll still get a nice incremental download that begins to play once enough of the file has downloaded to a temp file on the visitor's computer.
If you consider that two of the biggest online movie tutorial subscription series use QT, you'll realize that the installed base is good enough for high visibility commerce. (lynda.com and vtc.com)
Just remember to add a link to download the free QT plugin, and you'll be good to go.
Sheri
On Sep 10, 2004, at 4:50 AM, Hugh Todd wrote:
Vicki,
One quick question about Quicktime - my colleague said Quicktime is a Bad Idea because the file sizes are big and it doesn't have a big installed base... is this a good enough reason not to use it? Does one sacrifice accessibility for some for the convenience of most? (Which also could be categorised as accessibility too?) When it comes to the crunch, is Flash a better alternative?
*Can* you stream Flash content without the Flash server?
QuickTime's installed base is not as large as Flash's, that is true. Yet it could be as high as 80% of PC users (and, of course, 100% of Mac users). Apple claims that 250 million copies of QuickTime 6 have been downloaded in the less than two years since its release, and many more copies are installed with games, with iTunes and via other means - digital camera software, for example. (HP is about to install QuickTime on every PC it ships.)
In the following article it appears that QuickTime is almost equally placed with Windows Media for penetration of the streaming media market. This is not, probably, very helpful, because QuickTime does much more than play streamed media, and most people would have a mix of players on their systems. http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/06/11/streaming/index.php
So your colleague is not correct. QuickTime's installed base is huge. The question is, of course, is it large enough for you?
One thing that does make QuickTime a good choice from the web standards point of view is that it plays the MPEG-4 standard. (This is, to some extent, academic, though, if you want to broadcast files as QuickTime movies with text captioning.)
Disability software like JAWS needs special installation, so installing software for special needs is nothing new. You just need to know whether this would be a requirement you would like to make for the 20% or so of users who may not have it.
As to the issue of file size, it depends on what you are trying to do. If you are talking about sound or video, file sizes are going to be large-ish no matter what delivery mechanism you use. QuickTime does not suffer in comparison with anything else in this regard.
One of the beauties of QuickTime is that you can send media as "fast start" movies. These will (while indicating that they are downloading with a waiting screen) start playing once enough of the movie/sound-track has downloaded to play right to the end. It means you can place any size movie in a web page and know that it will play, without the need for a streaming server. (To see what I mean, go to Apple's movie trailer site and try one of the movies: http://www.quicktime.com )
And if you do want to use the QT streaming server, it is free (and open source). http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/streaming/ (Apple's version of it comes with Apple servers, which are proprietory, of course.)
Hope this helps!
-Hugh Todd
****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
