Specs For Streaming Video?

[andraste]

I'm conducting a tentative experiment in streaming my vids online - hitherto, I've only made them available for download. There are two copies of my Iron Man vid at that link; the one at the bottom has a larger file size but higher quality.

The trouble is, I never watch streaming video files if I can help it - my connection isn't really fast enough, so I find it simpler to just download everything - so I don't really know what people who want streaming vids are looking for. Faster load time so you can get an idea of whether or not you want to download the vid? Or is quality an important factor?

For vidders who make their vids available for streaming, what kind of codecs and settings do you use to encode them? I've always used DivX for my downloadable files, but I'm having trouble getting the size down for streaming.

Any advice/opinions of this subject greatly appreciated!

Comments

[aruna7]

I admit that quality is always an important factor to me. If the vidder spent time on making a video with decent or HQ clips, why would I want to see something that wouldn't do it justice?

I personally put my streaming videos on Megavideo by now. I work with DVD clips (VOB turned into MPEG with no compression) in Vegas. The file that I share online is always the WMV (rendered with default settings). It's the same I load on Megavideo (or Vidders.net) and put for download on Mediafire. I don't use particular codecs.

[yourlibrarian]

As a vid viewer, I can say that I stream vids for two reasons. The first is that it makes it simpler for me to watch it quickly as I can tab it open or watch right in the screen, and thus feedback the vidder. When I download I may end up forgetting about it for a while (read: hours to days) and by the time I view it's a chore to go back and find the original vid post.

Alternately, I prefer to stream than download because I sometimes don't end up watching the whole vid so being able to quickly see the first 30 seconds is more useful to me.

Of course, streaming or downloading speed is not a big issue for me, so I imagine experiences will differ.

[yourlibrarian]

As a vid viewer, I can say that I stream vids for two reasons. The first is that it makes it simpler for me to watch it quickly as I can tab it open or watch right in the screen, and thus feedback the vidder. When I download I may end up forgetting about it for a while (read: hours to days) and by the time I view it's a chore to go back and find the original vid post.

Alternately, I prefer to stream than download because I sometimes don't end up watching the whole vid so being able to quickly see the first 30 seconds is more useful to me.

Of course, streaming or downloading speed is not a big issue for me, so I imagine experiences will differ.