John:

Perhaps my question isn't clear. What I'm looking for is recommendations about FILE size assuming I use 320 x 240 resolution. I'm wondering if 1MB might be considered the standard limit for dialup? Or is it .5MB? Do video editors who put their work on the Web have max file sizes beyond which they won't go because they know users won't wait for the download? (I'm putting my stuff on a server that doesn't stream.) Personally, I find files of <5MB to be acceptable for broadband; my threshold for download is probably <2MB. But I don't know if my tolerance level is "average" or not.

Robert

Robert,

Hmmm, I'm not sure.... I've never seen any statistics regarding how long someone may be willing to wait to see a program. I guess it depends on how badly someone wants to see the video. On dialup, one can transfer an average of about 1 meg every 5 minutes or so. Personally, I just put the stuff up there at what I believe is a minimum acceptable video and audio quality given the program material and let the filesize be whatever size it ends up. Delivering quality video at dialup rates is problematic at best.

By the way, if you use Windows Media files, they will stream off of any server assuming the viewer has at least enough bandwidth to play it in real-time.

John

John:

Thanks for the response. The more I think about this, the more I think I might be coming at it from the wrong direction. I'm inclined (no pun intended) to agree with you; I think the prefered approach is to do the best editing and compressing you can and let the file size be what it is.

And thanks for the note about WMV files; I didn't know that they'd stream from any server...

Robert

You can always allow dial-up folks to download the whole file and play it from their hard disk, instead of streaming it. I find most people of 56K dial-up won't bother downloading anything much bigger than 2MB.

As John Cline said, >I guess it depends on how badly someone wants to see the video.<

I think knowing your intended audience is crucial. If you're posting say clips of a graduation or a soccer game or something, I bet the people in the video would be willing to download big video files. At the other extreme, if its a product demo (ie trying to sell something) I think most people, like me, won't wait too long, unless i have a particular interest or need.

Greg

If you look at the download counts at the vegasusers.com video sharing site you'll see that the largest files (near 20MB) are downloaded at least as much as the smaller files. This is particularly true in the case of Stan's (Stonefield) contributions. Even though his files average 11.15MB each everyone wants to see what he has to show next. Of course, by now he's built up a reputation of delivering videos that people want to see. On the other hand, even some of the shorter files get very little viewing because people don't know if it will be worth the effort for some of the obscure entries.

Perhaps it would be good to create a few very short experts from some of the larger files so that people could quickly see what sorts of videos you have to offer. Make some "trailer" versions that are well under 0.5MB and much less than a minute long. Have some sort of description that tells people what they will be seeing, and then says, "for the full video, click here ...". That way you can get them interested early on. Either that or those who won't be interested can move along without wasting much time or bandwidth, which is a good thing too.

I don't have any statistics on how many viewers are dialup and how many are broadband, but taking a quick guess from peeking at some of the download times i would say the audience is probably about 30% dialup.