Audio and video ...

They have: 54 posts

Joined: Oct 2001

I've been asked to look at including some audio and video in the site I'm working on. Personally I think neither are that well suited to the web unless it's a music or video-related site (especially as I live in a country where broadband is far from the norm), but it's something I need to work on regardless.

I'm very much at the beginning stage of working out how to go about this, however, my initial concern is what type of files to use. It seems that most sites user Real Audio files which require visitors to have Real Player - also the person who is supplying me with the files has encoded them in the Real format already (but he also has the unencoded files).

Personally I really despise Real Player and would not want to be encouraging people to download the software and all of the junk that comes with it in order to listen to or view files on my site. Does anyone else think this is a reasonable point of view or am I just being overly anti-Real? And if it is reasonable, what is the next best choice in terms of efficiency, quality (the files will be of people speaking - not music) and ease of gaining the necessary plug in? And if I do go for a non-Real option, how difficult will it be to get the necessary encoder?

Thanks!
Bug

Brian Farkas's picture

They have: 1,015 posts

Joined: Apr 1999

Well, if you choose the .wav format, all users on windows will be able to hear that automatically.. Although real is becoming more and more popular. Hope this helps!

Brian

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Or you could offer MP3's for download, that's a really popular format these days and most people would have the software to play it (realistically most people should have something that will play MP3's). Another good idea would be to provide a couple of different formats so people could choose.

Unforunately there seems to be very little quality information about audio/video options available. Look around at other sites offering audio/video and see what they use. Quicktime is another popular format for video. Good luck Smiling

They have: 22 posts

Joined: Feb 2002

I think you should use low quality .wav format.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Well, I guess it depends what kind of audio it is (music, speech etc.), how long it is and whether or not you want to play it directly in the browser or if downloading is okay. The problem with wav is that the file sizes are pretty big compared to mp3's. Real format is even smaller I think.

ValleyPages's picture

He has: 46 posts

Joined: Nov 2001

I agree with Megan...mp3s player software should be on most computers. Besides Windows Media Player plays them as well and that is installed with Windows.

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

check out webattack.com in their latest newsletter they mention a program called boomer, here is the text from the newsletter

I talked to Harry from Crazy Ivan productions last night - they just released an updated version of Boomer, that now supports Flash 6 compression as well. Boomer can compress your files into streaming SWF format, and produce some amazing results. You can compress stream a 600 kb WAV file down to 20-40k and stream it into any browser that has the Flash player installed (almost all of them). In addition, you can compress movies and images as well! Check out this simple example - I compressed the Windows Logon sound WAV file (500k) down to 30k - it will play instantly in your browser. If you're a myWebAttack member, you even get $10,00 off if you decide to buy it.

They have: 218 posts

Joined: Apr 2001

And you said, IMO I think flash has had its day, Wink.

TonyMontana
akaMethodAir
http://www.electricmpountain.com/home.htm

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