Best Video player for Website???

B

buckman

Member
I am editing around an 8-9 minute complilation showreel with Sony Vegas which has been great.

Now instead of youtube (which compresses, and can be a little grainy) i would love to put my video up on the web through my website but have no idea how to do this and more importantly which video player is the best?!?!
I have seen the DiVX videos which are very clear on http://stage6.divx.com/ which can be embedded into a personal website BUT the user has to download the video player first!

I was thinking of Quicktime which seems to be simple for BOTH mac & pc as my clients viewing this will be on both platforms..and hence why it needs to be very straight forward without haveing the need to download codecs, players etc.

Also this throws up the question of what file i render this to in Vegas? ie: MPEG2, Quicktime, AVI,? as im new to this im not sure how much i can hold in my website for streaming?

Can anyone think of a hassle free straight forward player for website videos (good quality) and what the files would need to be to play them?
Would the DIVX video player still need to be dowloaded if i "embedd" the player into my website first?

Sorry for all the questions and thanks again for any help!:huh:
 
Hi david thanks for your reply.

How do i get both wmv and quicktime if i have the video player "within" the website so people just have to press play?

Is there one foramt that will play both?

I dont want any clients to download anything you see hence the video player ready to go..

Thanks
 
I found a great compression process using Vegas Video and Quicktime Pro. I would be happy to share it with you if you like how it looks.

http://www.skippyfx.com/demo.htm

Let me know!

P.S. To embed video to your site you need a certain "script" which you place within the html of your page.

- Adrian
 
Yes thsi embedded Quicktime movie looks great! how did you do it? and what size / settings from Vegas did you use to get stereo sound and such good quality?

Thanks
 
brianluce said:
what's the verdict on the Real Netorks Players?
Click to expand...
No, don't do it.

Real is known for not only beeing poor quality, but the software is historically riddled with a mix spyware and adware. Many people refuse to ever install it on their system.

Shame, they where the pioneers of web streaming ... it must have gone to their head.


- Mikko
 
Flash video 8?

Its free if you're on a pc with Riva-FLV encoder.

IT has over 80% market share, higher than Quicktime and WMV.

Dont even think about real networks.

Unless you need to support playback on Mac OS 9, this should always be your first choice. See samples on my website in signature.
 
mikkowilson said:
No, don't do it.

Real is known for not only beeing poor quality, but the software is historically riddled with a mix spyware and adware. Many people refuse to ever install it on their system.

Shame, they where the pioneers of web streaming ... it must have gone to their head.


- Mikko
Click to expand...

I wish I'd seen this sooner. I installed realnetworks and it converted all my Itunes to real networks files. Now my itunes doesn't work. Any easy way to convert them back to the itunes file type? I'm on a pc with windows XP.

I could use some help because it's my wife's music. I'm in hot water at the moment...
 
Demistate said:
Flash video 8?

Its free if you're on a pc with Riva-FLV encoder.

IT has over 80% market share, higher than Quicktime and WMV.

Dont even think about real networks.

Unless you need to support playback on Mac OS 9, this should always be your first choice. See samples on my website in signature.
Click to expand...


The video quality of most video formats is quite similar, except for the MP4 format which results in a slightly better size-quality performance. MPG compression is shitty, a thing from the past. Quicktime 7 introduced a superior new codec, H.264, last year. Also, Flash Player 8 introduced a similar impressive new codec, the ON2 VP6. What does this mean? If you use one of these two formats you get great video quality at small filesizes, but since the software is quite new, it's possible that your visitors first have to upgrade their plugin. Note that this runs automatically with Flash Player.

There's nothing i can see at 640x480 that i cannot see at 320x240. Remember that the screen area of the first one is 4 times the area of the second one, and that the file will also become about 4 times as large. BUT if you are putting up a demo reel its probably a GOOD idea to go 640 x 480. I personally use 500x310 for my videos.

I always use the 2-pass VBR converter (except for rough tests). It takes the most time, but gives the best performance. I use a keyframe for every 2 seconds (50 frames) for video with little motion up to a keyframe every half second (10 frames) for video with a lot of motion. Bitrate for the video: 200 - 1000 kbps, again depending on the amount of motion in the source material. Just try it and if it looks good, try a lower bitrate until the quality starts to decline. Usually for most applications 400kbs will do fine.

My audio is set to 32, 64 or 96 kbps mp3. 32 for just speech, 96 for cool music. Again, listen if the sound starts to loose crispness.
 
Adrian @ Skippy FX -

Would love to know how you got your Quicktime movies looking so good and embedded into your website?

Thanks again!
 
would love more input about flash movies and where to find information about how to compress with flash, what is the best source, what framerates are people using

how about exporting for flash 6 safety this is a different flash code, but has almost 100% penetration

is there any prebuilt interfaces for flash, with the little things that control sound and start stop etc
 
buckman said:
Adrian @ Skippy FX -

Would love to know how you got your Quicktime movies looking so good and embedded into your website?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

one way to study other peoples quicktime movies is to view the source code of the webpage (view page source) and then copy the line of code href: that contains the .mov into the browsers addressbar then save that to the desktop and you have the movie file on your desktop

then open it in fcp and do tools analyze movie or quicktime and do movie info

this way you get the size, codec datarate framerate etc and can compare all the videos that you like against each other
 
i'm having flash issues right now too...
I'm using ffmpgX. When I output to flv from my FCP movie, it makes a file... but the icon for the file is all white, like Finder doesn't recognize it as anything. I can't play it in anything... and when it's dropped into the program that the client is using (Microsoft Articulate Presenter), it doesn't work either...

I think I'm not understanding something about scripting it for the program... but I can't seem to dig up any information on this... can anyone shed some light on the subject?

What does embedding or linking from a .swf file have to do with making .flv movies for the web? and how do you do it?

Thanks
Cody
 
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i have a flash issue also...everytime i import my video into flash the end result for some reason looks to be a darker video than my original. i've just started using quicktime files to put inside my webpages and put a link for people to install it. i guess i'll offer the flash version as a low quality option.
 
I just added a Flash coded video to my website and I am very impressed with the size and quality! I did several clips about 1 minute long with Quicktime .h264 and they were 10 times larger the the flash files. I am in the process of seeing how much smaller I can make my 10 minute video with decent quality.
http://www.milosart.com/paintings%201.htm
 
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It looks good. You could have gone a little bit bigger on the frame size, but that's a personal preference.

I'm thinking about writing a flash video encoder tutorial next.
 
I'll try a size bigger next with Flash. Before I used Flash I was a little frustrated with web video. I also use Dreamweaver and it's sooooo easy to import the flash video. Dreamweaver also adds the controls skin to the video.
 
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