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Macromedia

Introduction - How to Create Streaming Video

This tutorial covers the different types of video streaming on the internet.

When creating streaming video, there are two things you need to understand: The video file format and the streaming method.

Here is an excellent tutorial on most of the different techniques you will need to shoot video. http://www.mediacollege.com/video/

File Formats

There are many video file formats to choose from when creating video streams. The most common formats are:

1. Windows Media
2. RealMedia
3. Quicktime
4. MPEG (in particular MPEG-4)
5. Macromedia Flash

There are pros and cons for each format but in the end it comes down to personal preference. Be aware that many of your users will have their own preferences and some users will only use a particular format, so if you want to reach the widest possible audience you should create separate files for each format. In reality this isn't usually practical so you need to make a judgment call on which formats to provide. Obviously the better you understand all the options, the better your decision is likely to be.

At this stage we won't worry too much about individual formats 

Streaming Methods

There are two ways to view media on the internet (such as video, audio, animations, etc): Downloading and streaming.

Downloading

When you download a file the entire file is saved on your computer (usually in a temporary folder), which you then open and view. This has some advantages (such as quicker access to different parts of the file) but has the big disadvantage of having to wait for the whole file to download before any of it can be viewed. If the file is quite small this may not be too much of an inconvenience, but for large files and long presentations it can be very off-putting.

The easiest way to provide downloadable video files is to use a simple hyperlink to the file. A slightly more advanced method is to embed the file in a web page using special HTML code.

Delivering video files this way is known as HTTP streaming or HTTP delivery. HTTP means Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, and is the same protocol used to deliver web pages. For this reason it is easy to set up and use on almost any website, without requiring additional software or special hosting plans.

Note: This is not technically "true" video streaming — the best it can do is a passable imitation.

Streaming

Streaming media works a bit differently — the end user can start watching the file almost as soon as it begins downloading. In effect, the file is sent to the user in a (more or less) constant stream, and the user watches it as it arrives. The obvious advantage with this method is that no waiting is involved. Streaming media has additional advantages such as being able to broadcast live events (sometimes referred to as a webcast or netcast).

True streaming video must be delivered from a specialized streaming server.

Progressive Downloading

There is also a hybrid method known as progressive download. In this method the video clip is downloaded but begins playing as soon as a portion of the file has been received. This simulates true streaming, but doesn't have all the advantages.

This is the method we as Internet Marketers use most as it does not require special servers etc.

Which Method to Use?

The method you choose will depend on your situation, but most people will opt for HTTP streaming (download or progressive download). This is the easiest and cheapest way to get started. If necessary you can upgrade to a streaming server later.

Still, you will want to understand both options so the next two pages of this tutorial look at each one in a bit more detail. After that we'll talk about how to create the actual video files.

HTTP Streaming Video

This is the simplest and cheapest way to stream video from a website. Small to medium-sized websites are more likely to use this method than the more expensive streaming servers.

For this method you don't need any special type of website or host — just a host server which recognises common video file types (most standard hosting accounts do this). You also need to know how to upload files and how to create hyperlinks (see our website tutorials for more info).

There are some limitations to bear in mind regarding HTTP streaming:

• HTTP streaming is a good option for websites with modest traffic, i.e. less than about a dozen people viewing at the same time. For heavier traffic a more serious streaming solution should be considered.
• You can't stream live video, since the HTTP method only works with complete files stored on the server.
• You can't automatically detect the end user's connection speed using HTTP. If you want to create different versions for different speeds, you need to create a separate file for each speed.
• HTTP streaming is not as efficient as other methods and will incur a heavier server load.

These things won't bother most website producers — it's normally only when you get into heavy traffic that you should be worried about them.

To Create HTTP Streaming Video

1. Create a video file in a common streaming media format
2. Upload the file to your web server
3. Make a simple hyperlink to the video file, or use special HTML tags to embed the video in a web page.

That's essentially all there is to it. When a user clicks the hyperlink, their media player opens and begins streaming the video file. If the file is embedded, it plays right there on the page.

New Kids on the Block

Unless you are staying in an underground cave for more than a year without an internet connection, there's a healthy chance that you have atleast watched, if not downloaded, an online video on Youtube or Google Videos.

The online video sharing space has exploded in the recent months with the entry of new players like Metacafe, Blip.tv, Revver, Yahoo Videos and so on. Millions of video clips, technology shows, music albums, movie trailers are available on these video sites for online viewing or they can also be downloaded to your hard drive for offline viewing.

This is great for you business as you can now use them to promote products, services and anything you want. All you need is a camera, a bit of software and an Internet connection.

Digital and Analog Camcorders

If you already have a digital camcorder (one that captures in Digital8, MiniDV, HDV, or any of the DVD formats), then you're ready to start shooting your masterpiece. Your camcorder will need some kind of direct connection to your computer, either to the USB or FireWire ports or by inserting the DVD you've recorded. Once you've downloaded the video from the camera, you can upload it to YouTube or bring it into an editing program to play with it some more.

If you have an analog camcorder (one that uses VHS, VHS-C, SVHS-C, 8mm, or Hi8 tape), you can still get your videos onto YouTube. It will require an extra step and some additional equipment, though, since these camcorders are not usually equipped with computer connections. You will need to digitize the video with a converter box, which will convert the analog signal from the camcorder to a digital signal that the computer can understand. After the video has been digitized, you can manipulate it further or upload it.

Editing and Improving Your Videos

If you want to be a bit more hands-on with your video, most new computers come with basic video-editing software installed (like Apple's iMovie or Windows MovieMaker). Once you have copied the video from your phone, camera, or camcorder to your computer, you can bring the video into these programs. Most allow you to not only edit the video, but add effects, titles, and music to make your video look and sound more interesting. I personally use Sony Vegas movie Studio

Uploading Your Videos to YouTube, Google Video etc

Most of these services use the same system. Once you're happy with your final result, you'll need to save the video in a format that they can accept in order to upload. Unless you're a professional video producer, we recommend that you save your videos as either QuickTime .MOV, Windows .AVI, or .MPG files — these are the most common formats and they work well within most systems. Check with them in the help area to see which they prefer. I specifically recommend the MPEG2 or 4 (Divx, Xvid) format at 320x240 resolution with MP3 audio. Resizing your video to these specifications before uploading will help your clips look better on these sites.

When you upload your video, they will require you to choose at least one category and enter at least one tag to describe the content in your video. Adding this information helps other members find your video, so if you want an audience, help them out! The more accurate the tags are on each video, the easier it is for everyone to find cool videos to watch.

Make your tags as descriptive as you can—if you took a video of your friends at the beach, you might want to tag it like this: party beach surfing. Each tag is separated from the others by a space.

Ten video sharing services compared

Eyespot

Appeal: Easy-to-use video uploading and remixing.
Interface: Bright and colorful.  Tagging, forums, groups.  Not a lot of community features.
Editing:  Trim beginning and end, reorder clips on a timeline, add music and photos.
Sharing:  Post to a group, invite a friend to the service (but not directly to your clip).
Verdict: Uploading straightforward and painless.  But: 25MB filesize limit too small.  Mashup features fall short of Grouper's "groovies," and it's not even in the same ballpark as Jumpcut when it comes to mixing and editing.  Not a lot of reason to use Eyespot, in its current incarnation.

Google Video

Appeal: It's Google.
Interface: Typically clean and sparse Google layout.  Uploading requires you download the Google Video Uploader.  Allows you to add plenty of metadata, including a transcript.  You can monetize your content by assigning a sale price to each clip (you can also give users a "day pass," giving them access to the content for a limited time, but not ownership).
Editing: None.
Sharing: See below.
Verdict: Google Video requires a "video verification" process, where your submission is reviewed to ensure it conforms to Google's technical standards and legal policies.  This process "may take several days," so check back for an update.

Grouper

Appeal: YouTube with a file-sharing application built on top.
Interface: For full functionality, requires an application download. Windows Media Player-based (converts other formats).  Ratings, tagging, groups, RSS feeds.
Editing: Create mashups of your videos and photos, set to music ("groovies").
Sharing: Post direct to myspace, friendster, eBay.  Download to hard drive, iPod.
Verdict: "Groovies" are easy to create and could be very popular.  But: File-sharing application seems half-baked (and is undifferentiated from existing options).  "Groovies" will prove much more popular if they can be built online without having to download the app.  E-mail registration system was a pain; had to do it twice to get confirmed.  After several hours, my file was still unavailable, as the service was still "upload processing."

Jumpcut

Appeal: Create, edit, and remix video online.
Interface:  Slick interface feels more like an application than a web page.  Scales all videos to a larger size than other sites, but videos don't autoplay and there is no indication of what portion of the video has already been downloaded.
Editing:  Bar-none the best editing options of the bunch.  Splice your footage, reorder the shots, add music, photos, transitions, even effects--think iMovie in an online interface.  Very, very slick.
Sharing:  Email to a friend, embed in a web page (worked flawlessly in Wordpress).
Verdict: Playing with Jumpcut's features, you immediately understand that the future of online video is here.  No current competitor can touch it.  But:  Get too effects crazy and your video slows down.  Jumpcut doesn't re-render your files with every remix--which leaves the original video quality intact--but playback of edited files is not perfectly smooth. Don't throw out iMovie just yet.

Ourmedia

Appeal:  "The Global Home for Grassroots Media."
Interface: Slow, confusing, and messy.  Requires an Internet Archive account, and the integration of the two services is convoluted.  Keeps your content in its native format, which is both good and bad--it doesn't recompress your video, but it requires its users to have several different players installed correctly.  Creative Commons licenses built-in. 
Editing: None.
Sharing: RSS feeds, email to a friend, direct link to files from your own site.
Verdict:  Going forward, a good place to upload your media if it is socially-conscious or activist by nature.  Also works as an online repository for video/audio storage.  But: One of the most difficult sites to upload video to.  Current "alpha" version falls far short of potential--wait for the next version.

Revver

Appeal: YouTube with monetization--if people watch your video (and the embedded ad), you get paid 20% of what the advertiser pays Revver.  If they click on the Revver link at the end, you split the proceeds 50/50.
Interace: Quicktime-based.  Requires you to download a client for uploading content.  Tagging, emailing, rating, playlisting.
Editing: None.
Sharing: See below.
Verdict: Offers a unique revenue-sharing model that may appeal to content owners and producers.  But: Uploading process is convoluted (the promised drag-and-drop functionality was nowhere to be found).  After trying to upload my file using the Revver client twice, my video was still listed as "unavailable."  I later received an email from Revver stating that my submission may contain unauthorized material that requires clearances--which is true.  Because Revver and Google Video are the only sites in this roundup that let you monetize your content, we'll be back with an update comparing the two.

Videoegg

Appeal: Lets you painlessly upload video of any format to the web and post it to other sites or share it with friends.
Interface: Requires you download an application in order to upload.  The download seamlessly embeds in your browser to give you drag-and-drop functionality.
Editing:  Basic trimming of beginning and end points.
Sharing: Post direct to eBay, Blogger, and Typepad.  Creates a simple URL, lets you email the video, and gives you javascript and html code for embedding in your own pages.
Verdict: Painless experience.  If you only need to post and share video with friends, Videoegg just works.  Flash 8 video quality is pretty decent.  But: Video didn't embed properly in other pages (Wordpress).


Vimeo

Appeal: Flickr for video.
Interface: Nice and clean, uses a flash wrapper to play native formats.  No download required, simple and easy uploads.  Tagging, commenting, voting.  Nice player with a volume control and no burned-in logo.
Editing: None in the current version.
Sharing: Post to Flickr, send to del.icio.us, download original file, embed in your MySpace profile or blog, create an RSS feed.
Verdict:  Good video quality. Embedding the video in Wordpress worked flawlessly.  But: Light on community features, and weekly storage cap of 20 megs is too limiting.

vSocial

Appeal: "The fastest, easiest way to upload, watch and share your favorite video clips."
Interface: All Web 2.0'd-out.  Big fonts, AJAX, tagging, rating, reviewing, RSS feeds, creative commons licenses.
Editing: Offers "edit this video" functionality, which I couldn't test (see below).  Can also create "Video Rolls," which are customized playlists generated from your selected criteria.
Sharing: Embed in your own page, MySpace, Typepad, Blogger, del.icio.us, Flickr, Blog It! (write a post on your own blog about a video without leaving vSocial).
Verdict: Lots of community features.  But: Didn't live up to their "fastest" or "easiest" claim--I never successfully got a video uploaded (tried three times).  Quality of existing clips is less than stellar--everything's resized to 320X240.  Your mileage may vary, but even with a Quicktime file that uploaded to other sites without a problem, I never got vSocial to work.

YouTube

Appeal: The video-sharing site everyone's already heard of.  Mindshare-winner by a mile.
Interface: Tabbed pages feature ratings, favorites, flagging, tagging, and commenting.  Create playlists, subscribe to other's uploads, subscribe to tags.  The player only features a mute button (rather than level control), and full-screening the video opens a new window and starts playback over.
Editing:  None.
Sharing: Embed in other websites, including Friendster, eBay, Blogger, MySpace.
Verdict: Easy to use, no major issues.  Decent video quality, audio sounds compressed.  Video embedded in Wordpress fine (but was off-center).  But: No progress bar for uploading.  Fairly lengthy "processing" delay before you (or anyone else) can watch your video.

AND THE WINNERS ARE...

For posting: If you just want to get a video clip online and share it with friends via email or on your own blog, Vimeo wins for its speed, ease-of-use, and simple playback functions.  It also lets users download the original file, and features some light community features (note that a new version is launching very soon).  One of the few sites I used that I never had a problem with.  Alternate choice: Videoegg.

For viewership: If you want to step up to more community features and get widespread viewership of your viral clip, YouTube gets the job done with a lot less hassle than vSocial or Grouper.

For editing: If you want to alter your video online in any way--through editing, remixing, or combining your clips with those from other users--then head on over to Jumpcut and don't look back.  Jumpcut really offers the first leap forward in online video sharing, and is worth a look even if you have no use for editing features (its full-fledged community is launching "very soon").  Alternate choice: none, yet, although Motionbox looks to be a potential competitor.

For this roundup, I left out more services than I reviewed.  This is because many of them are mere YouTube clones, at least in their current state (e.g., CastPost, ClipShack, Dailymotion).  Others, like Dabble and the aforementioned Motionbox, are not yet publicly available.  You're welcome to check out a list of 40 video sharing sites at eConsultant, all of which I at least glanced at.  TechCrunch also has some great coverage of the developing online video scene.  

For a larger list visit http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=112147

Instantly Add Streaming Video To Your Website and make your site stand out from the crowd for Under $50!

Lots of people want to add video to their websites but not 
many people are able to find a viable cost 
effective solution until now.....

Streaming Video has always been available to the large corporate sites and techies. Now you can use the MSI Web Video Package software to produce your own streaming video just like the professionals with no knowledge of programming required. 

We will also provide you with all the tutorials and tools to make it as simple as possible for you. Just watch the videos on this page to see what you can do. 

What is included in the Package

MSI Web Video Package includes our proprietary software product and a group of free software packages and tutorials that will allow you to create or import various video formats and then compile them into a Macromedia FLV file. This is the best quality file format available today and is playable with no special plugings on over 90% of computers.

Our special software takes all the hard work out of linking your video to a player. If you have looked on the web for a player you will see they go from $25 upward and are very chunky. Then you have to work out how to link them with your video.

Our player is a small 3 kb file which makes it one of the smallest on the web.

AS you can see in the diagram to the left there are also a lot of added features for this powerful little player.

Lets have a look at them quickly.

• 3 Player sizes - There are three different player sizes you can choose from. 320x240 - 240x180 - 160x120. One will be a perfect match for your site.
  
• Playing Options - You can use the check boxes to activate Auto Play, Looping, and by using our custom affiliate link earn some revenue when you use your player.
  
• Custom Color - This feature allows you to take the colored line on our players and change it to suit your site.
  
• Server Storage - This feature allows you to store the videos in another folder or even another server. Make sure you add the / to the end of the path.

• Output Folder - This section has to be filled in to compile the files and means you can organize all your files for each project in one place.
  
  
• Instant Back room help link - This will get you into the help files and tutorials on our private room.

Plus Free Software - This package is designed to help you get the most out of your video and so we have included a recorder that will allow you to download from your supported video camera or use your web cam to make you videos.

There is also an editor so you can manipulate your videos and add effects etc. Many people have avi or mpeg files so we also include a converter to make the files into flv files for you. Some great sites so you can download and play with some free movies straight away.  We also provide tutorials on how to embed your video into your web pages.

We place all this information in a private room just for you that we will add to as we find new resources. The whole package is based around helping the novice to add streaming video to their web site. However the accomplished video streamer will also appreciate the ease of compiling and delivering streaming video using our software.

Questions and Answers

Why flv and not swf? - Swf files need to be compiled each time and have limitations on quality and also length. You can simply edit your flv file any time and reload to see the changes instantly.

Can I use the players in other Software? - NO. These players are the property of MSI Web Video and probably wont work anyway.

How hard is adding video? - With the interactive videos and software we provide most people should be able to have a video done and uploaded to their website within the hour. Much quicker once you have done it the first time.

What Hardware will I need? - Unless you are wanting to develop your own videos then no extra hardware is required than a standard multimedia computer and a little experience building web pages.

Summary of what you will get.

1. You will get the MSI Web Video software to attach your video to a player and all the options.

2.  A complete set of tutorials and software to help you encode and output a clean time sensitive FLV file

3. Free editing and recording software. These are all freely available on the Internet however we have sourced them for you.

4. A list of sites where you can download video files so you can start playing immediately and learning the power of video.

The cost of MSI Web Video is only $45.00 USD. 

This is probably one of the cheapest and easiest to use video software packages on the market today. It gives you the versatility to turn your PC or Laptop into a fully functional video studio for just cents on the dollar.