Question re flash streaming on web pages

riredale wrote on 12/3/2005, 9:56 AM
I've been frustrated with an effect I've discovered on my web pages.

On the website that I built and maintain for a local choir group, I have some pages that have not only still photo thumbnails but also a sample video clip from that particular tour. I encode using wmv9 at a bitrate of 200Kb/sec.

When viewing the page on IE, the embedded video player on the page behaves properly, in that it "primes" the video but doesn't actually begin downloading or streaming it until the user clicks the play button. However, Firefox is rapidly becoming a more common browser, and one in fact which I prefer on my own system. The problem is that Firefox behavior is different with wmv video: as discussed here, Firefox will begin to download the entire video clip in the background once the page is selected. It doesn't actually play the clip, it just downloads it. This is unwanted behavior, because it makes the page loading slow and awkward, and sometimes the user can't click on one of the photo thumbnails until the entire 12MB video has downloaded.

I can do a workaround by redesigning the web pages, but was wondering: if I used Flash video instead, would Firefox still insist that the entire Flash video be downloaded also?

Comments

gdstaples wrote on 12/3/2005, 10:32 AM
On the Flash video question no. When using Flix Pro (ON2) you can tell it to start playing immediately, wait until a certain percentage has downloaded (with pre-loader) or wait for the entire video to download. You can also do adaptive loading which automatically detects the person's connection speed and then starts playing when it has downloaded enough to not be interrupted upon playback..

I personally prefer Flash video to other formats.

Duncan
VOGuy wrote on 12/3/2005, 11:06 AM
...and, if you're willing to jump through a few hoops, you can stream HD with flash 8 over a standard DVD connection.

samples at: www.hd-tv.us

-Travis