Very small nutshell indeed Jay.
Who's right, the hosting guy? So no streaming video server running required to get streaming video from WMV files.
What file type are the files on your site and do you have other recommendations (settings) to render such a file?
All the help is welcome.

Thanks, Dries.

By the way, how do you embed the player?

Very small nutshell indeed Jay.

Sorry, if it was too small. I try to keep things simple, then expand as necessary.

Who's right, the hosting guy?

Yes, he was correct (and that's what I was attempting to say in my limited fashion).

So no streaming video server running required to get streaming video from WMV files.

Not in the strictest sense or the word, no (as you have seen).

What file type are the files on your site...

Those are Quicktime files (.mov) and Windows Media Player (.wmv) files.

... and do you have other recommendations (settings) to render such a file?

I use Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite--far more flexible and does a far better job than Vegas alone.

By the way, how do you embed the player?

For Windows Media Player:

<object ID="MediaPlayer" WIDTH="320" HEIGHT="284"
CLASSID="CLSID:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95" TYPE="application/x-oleobject">
<param name="FileName" value="Clip_Name.wmv">
<param name="autostart" value="1">
<param name="showcontrols" value="1"><embed TYPE="application/x-mplayer2" SRC="Clip_Name.wmv" WIDTH="320"
HEIGHT="284" AUTOSTART="1" SHOWCONTROLS="0">
</object>

For Quicktime:

<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab" height="256" width="320">
<param name="src" value="media/Clip_Name.mov">
<param name="autoplay" value="true">
<param name="controller" value="true"><embed height="256" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"
src="media/Clip_Name.mov" type="video/quicktime" width="320" controller="true"
autoplay="true">
</object>

Hope this helps.

Here's an example of live streaming for those of you that read this on time! It's a webcast of a live satellite launch from the equator that is going to take place at 1:00 am PST. I will be at the homeport in Long Beach where it will be produced and streamed.

Sea Launch Live

Broadcast starts at 12:35 am PST 6-18-06
Liftoff is at 1:00am PST

Okay thanks for the answers.
But as I mentioned (did I?) I have tested with a 6 min SWF file (made with Sorenson Squeeze and build in player) from our test web site, but that did not play until the full video was fully downloaded. So not streaming video at all.
Ehm.. isn't that kinda contradicting to what you and my hosting company mention?

"Since my hosting company keeps me in the dark as to what I should provide he argues that I can best create a WMV file that will act as streaming video, so play while downloading. He also argues that no streaming video server is required, which I doubt very much."

Your gut instinct is correct and your hosting comany guy is an idiot.

Far, far too many paople think that any video over the internet is streaming. That unfortunately includes many videographers (who should know better).

Your hosting company is saying that your clients are equally uninformed. To many, an HTML download "looks like" streaming because they click on the link and get a video. But it's not streaming.

For small, infrequently accessed content, (like a wedding video), this is probably not an issue. But if you are trying to stream data to hundreds or thousands of viewers, a single, shared host computer will be hoplessly overwhelmed.

Steve M.

But as I mentioned (did I?) I have tested with a 6 min SWF file (made with Sorenson Squeeze and build in player) from our test web site, but that did not play until the full video was fully downloaded. So not streaming video at all.

No, it doesn't contradict a thing. Neither I nor your hosting company, based on what you said, said anything about .swf files. I do not like .swf files for many reasons, one of which you are experiencing. And I certainly do not like what I see on YouTube--the picture quality is awful. If you'll go back and re-read what I said, you'll find that the only file types I've mentioned were .mov and .wmv files. They do exactly what "appears" to be streaming and that's exactly what your hosting company and I have said. I even supplied you with the html code you asked for to show you how the files and player are embedded in our site.

If you don't care what your video looks like, then you have many different options available to you. If you do care what your video looks like, then you don't have so many options to choose from.

[edit]

Can any of you experts outline what it takes to get true streaming video from the web using either a WSF, VFL or WMV file?

Yeah, it takes a whole lot of money. Go to a hosting company that has true streaming servers and talk to them. They will tell you what it costs!

Steve, you might want to be careful about who you call an idiot.

Based on what Dries said in his original post and based on what he said the hosting company said, and everything I said, is totally accurate.

Yes Jay, you're right about the file formats.
But as I thought SWF files were of the same streaming principle so that would not make a difference between the WMV and MOV files you mentioned. It did not behave as streaming video though.
But I guess it does. We will try again with WMV and MOV files and cross our fingers.

By the way, you are using Squeeze to render your WMV and MOV files? Why not directly with Vegas. Not happy with that?
I use Squeeze to creates SWF files, that look quite good mind you. As long as you get your settings right. I don't know what YouTube does to degrade the DivX file I posted to an extend that it is no longer acceptable for serious viewing.
The very reason why we want to host the file where the www.lapenne.com is hosted is exactly for this reason.

Thanks for taking the time to straighten me out, Dries

But as I thought SWF files were of the same streaming principle so that would not make a difference between the WMV and MOV files you mentioned. It did not behave as streaming video though.

Although I cannot give you a definitive answer on that, I would presume that it may be dependent upon the embedded player. In the code for the .mov and .wmv file players you can tell it to play as it downloads ("autoplay") or wait for the whole file to download first.

By the way, you are using Squeeze to render your WMV and MOV files? Why not directly with Vegas. Not happy with that?

Squeeze has more far options and tweaks than Vegas for compressing video--it allows for far greatly control.

I'm simply not too fond of Flash anything, period. But that's just my opinion. Some people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'm just not one of them.

This is probably too basic, and therefore I apologize if I'm insulting anyone, but to stream, you use proxy files. Thus, to play:

Christmas2003.wmv

you create a file called:

Christmas2003.wvx

You create the wvx with Notepad, and this is what you put in that little file:

<ASX version = "3.0">

<Entry>

    <Ref href = "mms://www.themeyersite.com/Sounds/Christmas2003.wmv" />

</Entry>

</ASX>

On your page, your link is to the wvx file, not the wmv file. This also prevents the WMV from being downloaded, except by people with lots of computer skill and determination.

If you go to my rather outdated web page:

www.themeyersite.com

you'll see at the bottom three different videos. Note that I have provided links using both the WVX file (which is the first of each pair of links) and also via the WMV file (which is the one that says "To open/download file directly, click here ---> ").

If you click on the WVX, after a short delay, but long before the entire file downloads, it should begin to play. By contrast, if you click on the WMV file and then select Open, you'll have to wait until the file arrives before it starts to play.

The server on which this resides is owned by a bankrupt company with zero employees. I am not even sure how it still runs. The point is, this is as low rent and low bandwidth as it gets, and is definitely not a fancy streaming server.

This also prevents the WMV from being downloaded, except by people with lots of computer skill and determination.

John, while the video played in Windows Media Player, I was able to click on File, then Save As and save the file to my desk top.

What happened?

That's because the code John showed doesn't disallow saving in media player. What is prevented is people right-mouse-button clicking on the link on the website and choosing "Save Target As". If they do then all they'll get is that little .wvx file instead of the video. Of course, if they realize that happened, they could open up the .wvx file, get the URL of the video, and paste that into the browser.

John, while the video played in Windows Media Player, I was able to click on File, then Save As and save the file to my desk top.

I was lazy. You have to add additional code to "protect" your video. You can do this in several different ways, depending on how badly you want to keep people from actually having the WMV file, rather than just being able to view it. In the simplest form, you just add one more line of code. I leave it as an exercise for the user to Google "Windows Media Metafiles." You'll quickly find the answers.

In the meaintime, however, I think I answered the original question posted by Joe.

I maintain a website for a local choir here in Oregon. Last year I embedded a number of video clips of past performances, and I used wmv as the medium. I had all kinds of negative feedback about misconfigured players. Also, the wmv file would not "stream" properly in Firefox, but rather would insist on downloading completely before closing that particular webpage.

I then discovered that Flash8 was nearly as efficient a codec (developed by a company called On2) as wmv and the Flash player was a trivial download and universal across all browsers. So last spring I converted my video clips to Flash8 using the Flash8 encoder from Adobe/Macromedia (other encoders produce lousy results, in my opinion) and changed the embedded code in the webpages to display a simple and elegant (and free) Flash player. I built the website with a nifty product called "SiteSpinner" and you can read about my experiences over on their message board here.

The simple little video player that I use is now used all over the Internet on various websites. You can see it in action on one of my webpages, such as this one.

I still have a very limited knowledge of Flash, but as I understand it, a swf file is sort of a container for a bunch of items that make up a Flash presentation on a web page. If one of those items is a bit of video, then of course the entire video clip needs to load at the outset, or the Flash presentation won't play properly. In my case, however, the Flash video file is an "flv" file and it streams just as a wmv file is supposed to; that is, it's not supposed to download at all until the video player on the webpage asks for it, and when the player does, it buffers just a few seconds of the downloading video file before playing--so no waiting.

(Sorry in advance if the web page loads slowly; the choice of host is out of my control and I think they're incredibly slow at times.)

My organisation runs many web servers with video clips, so here's another nutshell.

True streaming video is a file that is being encoded in real time and where the data is being delivered in real time. A good analogy is a live TV broadcast, the channel is "streaming" the footage to your TV. The advantage of this is that it is relatively easy on bandwidth and resources, but does need a specific type of server set-up.

Most video on the Internet is the equivalent of video on demand, where the end user downloads the file before it can be played. Why this type of video appears to be streaming is because both QuickTime and Windows Media Encoder have profiles that allow files to start playing while they're still downloading.

For small, medium traffic websites this is good enough, all you have to do is remember to use the correct profiles in both encoders when making the files.

Here are samples of the 3 leading formats (.mp4, .wmv, Flash)

http://www.hd-vo.com/stream/

They are simply links to the files, to allow downloading & comparison, but it does give a useful comparison. The streaming rates / image size is deliberately chosen to show strengths & weaknesses of the formats.

Here are samples of the 3 leading formats (.mp4, .wmv, Flash)

VERY interesting. Assuming that the tests are fair and really comparing apples to apples (I couldn't download the Flash file to see how big it really is), then the WMV file isn't even close in quality -- which mirrors my own experience. WMV has always been bad, and real media, which no one wants to use because of the real media player, was always better. The mp4 version is definitely better, but still has some of the same problems of having entire areas of the picture seeming going fuzzy. The Flash picture had much higher apparent sharpness, especially in the early scenes. The was definitely quite a bit of small blockiness artifacts throughout, but none of the feeling that I am looking through a window that has Vaseline smeared over parts of the pane, which is how I feel when viewing WMV.

Based on all the positive viewing experiences I have had with Flash videos, all the negative viewing experiences I have had with WMV files (including the hundreds I have created in Vegas), I definitely have to start using Flash. WMV just doesn't cut it by comparison.

To compare apples to apples one would need to use a third-party encoder, such as Sorenson Squeeze, to get a true comparison of video formats. Vegas is not an encoding application and as such does not offer the control needed for an apples to apples comparison.

This was pointed out in an earlier thread on this very subject. One of the posters was using Sorenson to make his Flash video and using Vegas to make his Windows video--he was comparing apples to oranges!

One of the posters was using Sorenson to make his Flash video and using Vegas to make his Windows video--he was comparing apples to oranges!

I realize that Sorenson is a high-end encoder, but then again, Vegas uses encoders that aren't exactly bargain basement material. Therefore, what I infer -- whether you intended to say this or not -- is that Vegas' WMV encoder isn't very good.

Remember that Windows Media relies somewhat on the complexity of the decoder, ie. the more powerful the playback PC, the better it looks. Having made hundreds of QuickTime and Windows Media files, if the file sizes match in my experience WM always outperforms QuickTime.

One other aside; I find that resizing (down) and deinterlacing in Vegas always makes the video look "soft", it's much better to save in the original form (as an AVI) then prepare in VirtualDub or similar.

John, the Vegas encoder doesn't match the output of Soreson encoder.

First - since I'm not an expert on encoding, I can't truly say whether the test IS fair. What I can say is these are the best results I could achieve after a lot of experimentation.

Secondly, after all of this, I can't even say which format is better. Each one shows different strengths and weaknesses.

Also, I get different results depending on the playback system. On my home laptop (AMD moderate speed processor) .wmv wins, followed closely by Flash. At my office studio, (Pentium Hyperthreading 3.0 gHz) It's Flash followed by .mp4. On my Macs - .mp4 wins, Flash is Barely viewable on a dual core Mac-Mini, pretty good on my old G4 laptop. .wmv doesn't play.

Ya takes yer chances!