There si no universal answer. Use QT (works about 80% of time) or flash (works about 90% of time) to play your video. WMP's success is -- well i don't know, but i'm quessing less then QT.

Patryk, with all due respect, the only times I have encountered problems playing media files, it's been because the source code for the web site was not written properly, or the files themselves are corrupted in some way, or both.

If you have valid files and properly written code, there is no reason for the media not to play (unless you don't have the required media player).

I partialy agree with you Jay. The only thing is that often the problem occurs on the viewer's end as the player is not set up correctly or for whatever reason. I'm just speaking from personal experience of testing several video formats for the web. WMP gave me usually the most trouble and although it could be that it was my fault i was always too lazy to figure out what the problem was so i stuck to what worked (QT and Flash).

Okay, I updated my laptop today to the latest version of IE6 and Windows Media, and the page is now playing properly in both the laptop and desktop machines. The WMV content is running at slightly over 250Kb/sec, which is a bit too fast for our DSL connection here (bandwidth limited to about 200Kb/sec). So what happens is that the player buffers about 5-10 seconds of playback, then plays fine for a while, then freezes in order to let the stream fill up the buffer again. So I guess it's working okay.

Jay, the SiteSpinner program does generate some additional stuff, but that's the price I guess one pays for the flexibility that program provides. In any event, except for the content (video and still photos) the web page actually loads very quickly, so I'm okay with the added overhead. I'm sure if I were to hand-code in HTML I could do a much more compact job--kinda like coding in assembly rather than C+.

I still can't figure out why the W98se machine can't do a good job with the video file. I'll try to download the latest IE6 and Media Player for that, too...

Do any of you guys know if Flash or Quicktime generates a video file as compact as wmv? I had assumed that wmv9 was about as good as one could get these days, with the exception of H.264. Am I correct?

In defense of SiteSpinner here's a little endorsement from their site:

As a long-time member of The HTML Writers Guild, I tend to be very critical about most WYSIWYG software programs. After downloading SiteSpinner V2.0 and running it through rigorists tests (trying to confuse the program), I'll have to say that the 'source code' of the final product is very clean and conforms to W3C specs. I highly recommend this software for beginning web designers as well as veteran writers.

An excellent web design tool

Scott Allcorn
Gizzmo Enterprises

Personally I don't know how clean the code is -- I do know it generates a lot of it but I've been playing with the trial for about 2 weeks (just expired) and I love it. I'm not sure if it requires CSS1 or CSS2 but it probably works in almost any browser less than three years old.

I've coded in Homesite on and off for several years but it takes hours and hours to do what you can do in SiteSpinner in a fraction of the time.

Your site looked great Riredale, very clean and well-laid out. I had no problem playing the video. Other than that I can't contribute anything else other than to say that you can add properties to the "object" in SiteSpinner, of which there are several dozen for wmv files. In yours it simply had height and width and the filename set. (That may be all you need).

Sometimes IE "coerces" you into playing the video in a side player with it's little dialog asking you if you want to do that. That may be what happened on several of your users' computers. Personally I don't think you can find a better presentation medium for the web than wmv. Quicktime can look terrible unless it's done by professionals (movie trailers and such). Media Player is standard with every Windows computer. Even if you use wmv9 and they have an older player I believe they will be asked if they want to download the codec for it.

Won't play for more than a couple seconds at a time for me and I have a VERY fast connection.

In contrast, videos from my own streaming site (www.videobackstage.com) start up quickly, as does the one from www.chanimal.com/video (the sample uses a window).

I agree with Jay that there appears to be a bandwidth issue on your side. Good luck.

I'm beginning to think that the server hosting the wmv file is going through some sort of roller-coaster ride of availability. Earlier tonight I had a terrible time getting pretty much anything from the site, while another site (Zdnet's download site) just zipped along, limited only by my 25KB/sec DSL ceiling. We have that ceiling, incidentally, because the local DSL outfit (Qwest) charges only $15/month for the service. I didn't know at the time I signed up that I'd be doing streaming video development here. Still, I figure that if I can get decent results from my web site at 25KB/sec, then anyone having regular DSL or cable will have absolutely no problem, right?

So, coupled with the fact that some of you with very fast connections are also having great difficulty pulling a 250Kb/sec wmv streaming video out of the server, then it must be a server issue. I'll call them tomorrow.

Incidentally, the choir is doing a tour of the Boston area around the 4th of July, and I will be doing a blog/journal on SiteSpinner, uploading the new pages to the server every evening. The choir is going to sing the national anthems at a baseball game during the tour (Canadian and USA anthems, so I assume the Red Sox are playing Toronto). Watch for me on TV; I'll be the guy waving at the camera with the surround-sound mic setup on the top of my VX-2000.

Firefox wouldnt even finish loading the page so IE is a minimum requirement.
-edit- ACTUALLY, I hit stop and firefox ended up playing it finally. I had IE open to the page and it would not start the video. It coud be all the vegas forum people checing it out. --LOL

I usually put wmv files online and let people rightclick and save them to hard drive or by left clicking it will download and open up in WMP. Embedding it on the page is what seems to be the problem here. You can put a screen shot and let that be linked to the WMV and have people view it in the external player and not from the page. If you want to have it embedded in the page I recommend using the Flash Video format. You will need Macromedia Flash Pro 2004 in order to do it. Those files also work better if you are actually streaming them from a streaming provider. If you only have a few people viewing then you dont need the streaming provider. But now that you have posted this on the Vegas forum you will see the whole thing bog down without the streaming server assistance.

-TomE

IE isn't a minimum requirement because all I use is Firefox and I had no problem loading it.

Thanks again to everybody who took the time to check this out for me.

Here's the latest: I spoke with the guy running the servers. He said that the site was throttled back because of all the streaming(!). He said some users just clobber everyone else by doing massive streaming downloads--Star Wars comes to mind (not my little piddly 250Kb/sec choir video). He said they keep a separate server onsite just for streaming stuff, no charge. He also said they impose a datarate limit of 384Kb/sec just to discourage being swamped with massive files. Done deal.

This morning I also updated the 98se computer to the latest version of IE6sp1. Now the webpage plays nicely on that computer also. So I'm a happy camper--all the computers treat the website in a consistent fashion.

This server guru also mentioned that they don't touch Real Media--he says the Real people require payment of fees or something to that effect. He also said the Real player download takes over the computer (which no doubt many of you have already noticed). He also didn't care much for Quicktime. He said Flash is very popular, but I'm assuming that Flash is serving a different need--for video-like "movies" involving graphics. So that leaves WMV, which seems to do a reasonable job at 250Kb/sec for my little video clip.

One other thing still bothers me, though: the wmv clip seems to be very dark on playback. I don't know if it's in the clip or in the player at my end. I don't know if there's a "brightness" parameter that I can control on the web page, or if I just need to brighten the avi a bit before encoding to wmv.

Again, thanks to all. Hopefully the video will stream much faster in 24 hours.


Edit: Per TomE's comments, I surfed over to the Flash website. Hmmm... I'll have to take a closer look at doing the thing in Flash. The bottom-line question now is whether Flash or wmv will give the better image for an equivalent bitrate...