Video Compression 101
Video compression seems to be a mystery for some of us in the adult webmaster community. I have seen a lot of questions on various message boards and chat systems asking what do I do with my video clips now that I have them on my computer? Well, there is no simple answer but what I would like to do with this article is explain the basics of a few different video formats and a few game plans to help you on your way.
Without going into every video compression format available, I would like to cover the top three formats used on the Net currently. Although there are various other formats – some better than others – it would take up too much time explaining the difference, and confuse everyone in the long run. The current main formats would be Windows Media Player, Apple’s QuickTime and Real Video/Audio Player. Each of these formats has the ability to stream video/audio from the web.
Everyone that owns a computer, whether it is a Mac or a PC, has at least one of these installed on his or her system. These three formats cover the mass majority of players used on the Net today.
All of these players use “codecs.” In very simple terms, codecs are drivers that compress video/audio into smaller sizes saving you hard disk space or bandwidth over the Net. Each player comes with a similar codec that decompressed the video that was compressed. For example, compressing a clip in the latest Windows Media Encoder uses a codec called “wm8,” or Windows Media Version 8. When video is played on Windows Media Player it knows what codec it was compressed in and uses that to decompress the video. There are advantages and disadvantages to each codec out there, but I will point out some of the better ones in this article. Now, on to the different players…
Lets talk about the Windows Media player first (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.asp). This player comes with every PC sold that runs the Microsoft operating system from Windows 95 to XP. They even have a player that Mac and Pocket PC users can download from the Web.
Windows Media Player (WMP) has gone through its many versions and codecs to get to version 8 and has some new stuff on the horizon called project “Corona”. Currently, WMP will play most audio and video formats available to almost any video format on the Net, and it also has the ability to download a codec from the Net if it can’t find it on your computer. The video and audio quality that you can get with WMP is really good and it streams pretty well over the Net as well. This makes WMP a versatile player and one not to be overlooked when deciding which formats you plan on compressing your video clips in.
However, there are no current WMP players for Unix operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Irix and so forth. Also, from what I understand, WMP cannot play QuickTime video/audio codecs, so go figure…
QuickTime was developed by Apple and comes with every Apple computer sold. QuickTime Player can also be installed on a computer running Microsoft’s operating systems by downloading it from the QuickTime Web page at (http://www.quicktime.com). There are two versions: a Free Player and a Pro Version, but for now, the Free Player will do.
As with WMP, QuickTime can also play various video/audio codecs, which keeps it versatile and easily upgradeable and has the ability to let you know when new versions of QuickTime are out. QuickTime also has good video/audio playback quality and the ability to stream over the Net as well.
Real Systems (http://www.real.com) usually doesn’t come preinstalled on either Mac or Microsoft operating systems and usually requires the user to download the player off the Internet. However, they have a player for almost all operating systems from Mac and PC to Unix systems. I have never been a fan of Real systems and find that the other two systems above have better quality and streaming abilities. Also, another factor is that you have to pretty much download this player from the Web because it doesn’t come preinstalled when you buy your computer. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good format though.
Well, as you can see, there are a few differences between the players. Some come with your computer and some you have to download from the Net. They all pretty much work the same but I think it comes down to a few things: Video/Audio Quality, Bandwidth Usage, Streaming Ability, Usability and number of installed based users. I think WMP and QuickTime are the kings currently on the Net.
The need for good quality video has been one of the major concerns users have. What if my user doesn’t have the right player installed on his/her machine to view my video? So, how do you get nine minutes of video stream to a user that is on a dial up modem, DSL or cable modem and provide them good quality audio/video? These are all questions that you should ask yourself at first. Let’s take a look at the first one…
The ability to stream video from your server to the user requires a lot of thought. A few factors to think about first would be what do most users on the Net use as their main video player or do I force them to download one? Well, as we have covered above, the three main ones would be WMP, QuickTime and Real Player and you are pretty much guaranteed that one of these players will be installed on a particular individual’s PC.
I personally only compressed to QuickTime and WMP since these are pretty much going to be installed on any Mac or a PC running Windows, and find that making a user download a player causes a lot of frustration on the user’s end. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not hard to download a player, but when someone signs up to your site they want to be able to click on that video link and have it happen right there and then.
Now that you have chosen the players you wish to support, it’s time to start thinking about the user’s connection to the Internet. The hardest thing to support would be a user using a normal dial up modem with speeds of 28.8k or 56k, since there are still huge amounts of people who are using this. With the advent of DSL and Cable modems – what people are calling “broadband” – it makes our life much easier and allows us to bring higher quality video at better speeds to our users. So, you can pretty much break it down into two speed categories: the modem users and the broadband users.
Let’s take a look at what we have discussed in part one of Video compression. There are three major Audio/Video Players available, and depending on what computer you have, one of them might be already installed. Users’ connection speeds to the Net vary and we have broken them down into two categories, modem and broadband.
This will start to give you a good, basic understanding of what you will need to do in order to bring video to your members. Choose your players wisely, think about what the majority of users use and convert your video for the two basic connection speeds. This should cover a wide majority of users and hopefully prolong membership to your website. With these basics in mind, this should help give you a grasp of what game plan you want to create for your website. Now please remember this: this is a Beginners Guide and a lot of technical details have been left out in order not to confuse. In the next part we will discuss some tools that will help you convert your video to these formats and talk about some other services that will help you do this on the fly.