Tell Us About Video

 These are just some of my notes from the session. Al or anyone else, feel free to modify as needed. - emilio

•   Streaming video

• provides immediate video start
• requires special media server (e.g. Windows Media server, VLZ, Real Networks)
• User doesn't end up with a local copy of the file. This makes it appealing to protect DRM
• Simulcast- adaptive technology where the video content is preprocessed and different quality levels, saved to different files, and the appropriate file is streamed to the client depending on its available bandwidth

•  Download video

• User ends up with local copy.
• not adaptive (only a single copy of the content to be served)
• may create the effect of streaming (start playback before it has completed downloading), but it's not warranted
• much easier for a regular user to copy the content file and use without permission
• Pseudo-streaming (extending bullet 3 above)
  • Provides immediate video start
  • Only http server (any will do: apache, lighttpd, iis) required.
  • User may or may not end up with a local copy of the video (depending on the player)
  • Most video sharing sites use this technique (youtube, gofish, metacafe, etc.)
  • flv format works well with this
  • Usually requires lower bit rate/quality video files

• The art of delivering video
  • It will get very complex very quickly.
  • Recommend going to a video service provider (not just a storage like Amazon’s S3) for a first run because there are too many details that could result in non-optimal solutions
  • This includes not only technical aspects like image quality/size, compression; but also user experience issues (e.g. delivering a 2 hr video training session will likely best broken up in chapters for online training)

File Formats

• Bit Rate
• Frame Rate
• Size
• Audio
• Video Container

 

Protect yourself