Video
Early web sites were very static affairs, especially before the
introduction of inline images and the availability of techniques such
as Netscape's push-pull. Web designers have been eager to find ways to
introduce eye-catching motion into their pages, even resorting in far
too many case to use or abuse of the infamous blink tag.
Push-pull was obsoleted by the introduction, again by Netscape, of
inline GIF animation (GIF animation itself wasn't new, but browser
support was).
Several other techniques are now available for animating web pages, but
most of them are more suited to 'cartoon' style animation rather than
portrayal of real scenes such as those available in the video medium.
The growth of the multimedia-oriented World Wide Web has accelerated
the demand for sleek, attractively packaged information which can be
distributed via the web.
More and more companies are determining that video is a desirable
part of their communications strategy.
The applications for video are wide-ranging, from
network-based training,
to videoconferencing,
to video brochures.
Video adds an exciting interactive dimension to corporate
communications.
Video is not yet widely deployed at web sites, due to the huge storage
and bandwidth requirements.
Video is typically recorded in analog format,
which can be represented by a curvy sine wave,
much like waves moving across the ocean.
Analog video cannot be stored on a computer's hard drive,
your company's LAN,
or the Internet because these tools work exclusively with information
stored in a digital format.
Digital video is stored and transmitted as a stream of zeros and ones,
which a computer or similar device then interprets to produce a display.
The most common regular (non-streaming) video formats are
- AVI for Windows,
- MPEG for all platforms, including UNIX.
- Quicktime MOV for Mac (and Windows too),
The most popular video editing and compression tools have versions
for both Windows and Macintosh, so you can build your video
compression toolbox around your existing equipment.
Players for AVI (such as Media Player in Windows 95) or for
QuickTime are very common.
These formats are designed for optimal
quality, and are not suited for
streaming.
Motion Picture Experts Group
is a format that delivers T.V. quality, 30 fps, full motion video.
MPEG defines a set of international standards for the compression and
de-compression of audio-visual information (e.g., movies, video, music)
in a digital compressed format.
The major advantage of MPEG compared to other video and audio
coding formats is that MPEG files are much smaller for the same quality.
This is because MPEG uses very sophisticated compression techniques.
On the Web,
MPEG Video files have the extension .mpg and
MPEG Audio files have the extension .mp2 or .mp3.
MPEG solves a fundamental problem of digital video -- space.
A single second of
uncompressed video would occupy 30 MB of a computer's disk space.
MPEG also addresses the issue of how much processor power
is available at the typical desktop, and, as an international standard,
ensures that we don't have a babble of digital video formats to contend
with.
MPEGPLAY is available for Windows 3.1, Win 3.11, Windows 3.11 WFW,
Windows 95, and Windows NT.
If you have Windows 3.1, 3.11, or WFW,
you will need Win32s version 1.15a.
The unregistered version has a 1 MB file size limit.
You can download Mpegplay at
ftp.ecel.uwa.edu.au/users/michael/.
Vmpeg is available for Windows 3.1 and higher, plus Win 95.
It will also play MPEG audio.
The QuickTime MPEG extension works directly with QuickTime to provide
complete playback and control of MPEG movies.
This
Macintosh download
installs the QuickTime MPEG extension, the latest MoviePlayer (2.5.1),
and an updated Thread Manager.
QuickTime is a multi-platform industry-standard multimedia architecture
used by software tool vendors and content creators to create and
deliver synchronized graphics, sound, video, text and music.
The QuickTime plug-in
lets you experience QuickTime animation, music, MIDI, audio, video,
and VR panoramas and objects directly in a Web page.
It works seamlessly within firewall environments and requires no
special server software.
It's available for Mac 68K/PPC and all flavors of Windows.
Check out Apple's
samples page for movies,
digitized audio, MIDI soundtracks, 3D
animation and virtual reality made possible by QuickTime.
The
QuickTime Discussion Forum
is a web-page based forum moderated by Apple Support Engineers.
The QT viewer is available for the PC and the Mac.
A good source of Quicktime Movies is
Jesse's Movies.
delivers 'newscast'-quality video over 28.8 kbps modems,
full-motion-quality video using V.56 (56 kbps) and ISDN (56/64 kbps)
modems,
and near TV broadcast quality video at LAN rates or 'broadband' speeds
(100 kbps and above).
On the client-side, RealVideo delivers easy-to-use interactive features,
such as video seeking and scanning, clickable video regions,
and 'buffered play' for greater video quality using slower 28.8 kbps
modems. On the server back-end,
RealVideo delivers the most scaleable,
cost-effective media server solutions,
allowing webcasting companies to deploy from several hundred to
several thousand simultaneous video streams.
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