Video Streaming

[vee]

Hi,

We have an existing client who wishes to add video to his site - he refers to it as "buffering not downloaded" so is he meaning "streaming" do you think? Not done this before.

If it is "streamed" this is not allowed from our reseller hosting - also I would not know how to do it 

However, is it possible to encode the video into "Flash" or any other technique to get around this please.

Advice appreciated 

Thanks
vee

[Chris H]

If it's just the odd video then use a flashplayer of some sorts to play it.

I've used http://www.coffeecup.com/video-player/ before. Works well.

There may be other freeware versions that do the same thing though.

[vee]

Thanks Chris,

Looks interesting. I have Flash plus the video encoding stuff on my PC, just never used it before. I'll have a play with that and see what's what. If it all goes wrong, I'll take a look at that coffeecup app.

cheers 

[Chris H]

If you do decide to purchase let me know and I can get you 20% off.

[Jeewhizz]

Depending on how easy you want to make it onthe client, you can get them to upload an mpg video etc, and this be converted to a flash video using free/open source software on the server. Depends how often videos are going to be inserted on the site.

Jee

[Haze]

Hi Jee,

Now that sounds interesting, do enlighten me please...

Cheers
Andy

[Jeewhizz]

You'll need a dedicated server, and enough money to pay someone to do it. I haven't got time to go through it on a forum, but needless to say it's not something you can just hash together and hope it works.

[slaughteredlamb]

At the risk of hijacking this thread I'm thinking of adding a couple of videocasts to my website but am confused by all the terminology. If I 'embed' the video into a webpage i.e. like YouTube is that then called Streaming? Why do some hosts ban streaming but allow people to download videos, I mean if it's streamed it's still using the same bandwidth as downloading it isn't it?

Basically I'm just wanting a way of letting people watch some video files that can be in pretty much any file format as long as they are viewable. Ideally I'd like people to be able to watch them from a webpage on my site rather than having it launch in Media Player/Quicktime.

[Chris H]

Think of 'streaming' in terms of the end user having a seamless viewing experience, minimal stop / starts, buffering etc. Unless bandwidth use is important to you then I wouldn't worry too much. If it does cause problems then shove the thing on YouTube and embed their player. Or do as Jee says and cough up for a dedicated server.

If it's hosted on You Tube then they get hit in terms of bandwidth. If it's hosted on your own server then you get hit.