Technical considerations 2c
- 1. Technical Considerations Platform I feel the most common platform for this DVD will be a computer which is good as it gives us a wider compatibility as opposed to if it was just DVD players. Because it’s on the computer we are able to use the best and most suitable format. All of the considerations involving the players and formats will be displayed below. Players I will need to make sure the video we produce will be playable on all the major players, such as Flash, Shockwave and Real Player. This is key to making sure the largest possible number of people will be able to view the video. I feel that the majority of people will be using the Windows Media Player. This is what I will aim the video at. Below I have listed some basic information for consideration. Flash Player A product made by Macromedia, it is essential to run any .swf files in a web browser. The name ‘player’ it is simply a program that plays files that are created in authoring applications. Originally it was used to display simple 2-dimensional vector animation, but has become popular for the playing of right internet applications, and also streaming video and audio. Shockwave Shockwave was created by Macromedia as their first and most successful multimedia player, before flash. It was widely used to create online movies and animations; however, now it is mostly used in game development, this is due to the faster rendering engine with hardware-accelerated 3D to match. The only disadvantage to using this player is that it is not available for Linux, but there are workarounds. Real Player Real player is a cross-platform media player; it supports and plays a number of multimedia formats, such as MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime and Windows Media. QuickTime Developed by Apple, it can play many formats such as digital video, media clips, animation, text and music. This is mainly used on Mac machines and requires a different format. I feel less people own Mac computers so this will be avoided.
- 2. File formats There are many different File formats which can be used to create animation. There are a few formats, however, that are more commonly used than others. This is due to the fact they are more widely compatible therefore making them more suitable for use as more people can watch them. The formats are as follows. .wmv This format is based on the Microsoft Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container format and is compressed with Windows Media compression. It is a widely compatible format that is able to play videos in both standard definition and high definition. Conveniently it also produces very small files which will make it very simple to put it on low sized DVDs, which will keep the costs down. This file is playable by Mac computers too, again increasing the viewership. .mpg This again is a common digital format standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). This typically incorporates MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 audio and video compressions, and is often used for creating movies to be distributed on the internet. .mp4 Movie or video clips that use the MPEG-4 compression, developed by MPEG, and similar to a .mpg format. The difference is that it uses separate compression for audio and video. Video is compressed with MPEG-4 video encoding, and the audio is compressed using ACC compression, the same type of compression used in .AAC files. .mp4 is supported by many video programs and many hardware devices and operating systems. Streaming Methods& File Size I think it would be important to have a high quality file format when streaming the video as people who are watching it may be able to reduce the quality of the video in order to make it stream faster. I think this will make it the most effective as people with various bandwidths will be able to watch the video with decent load speeds. This works in conjunction with file size, as the lower the size = the faster the load speed online. It will be important to get the lowest possible load times whist retaining the maximum quality. Good sites that allow videos to be played at HD quality and are able to be embedded are: YouTube Vimeo
- 3. There other less well known video hosting sites, but these two are the most popular, and each has little drawbacks so it wouldn’t make sense to choose another one. I feel out of Vimeo and YouTube (both sites I use daily) that the stronger out of the two is YouTube. I find the videos take considerably longer to load on Vimeo whilst in HD. For this reason alone I intend to upload the video to YouTube, this means I could also embed the video to the website and any other places that would require an embedded video.