Streaming Solution

[Dot50Cal]

I've been researching what we should use to stream videos and I'm really leaning towards Divx's Stage 6 site. High resolution, good quality video and it wont use any of our bandwidth but can still be embedded onto the site

Any objections? Concerns?

[James]

Any objections? Concerns?

......

Nah in all seriousness, sounds like a better idea than YouTube =D

[Dot50Cal]

I was toying with using Quicktime, but Apple has proven that they cannot make a good encoder on the windows platform for it so thats out. My next thought was flash streaming but the quality produced for that is terrible. Borman's videos on Stage6 sealed it for me. They actually have 720p resolution or whatever you have your default encode as, and the options for scaling it to fullscreen make the video smooth and not blocky at all.

Im uploading a test video now.

[rewak]

Stage6 seems like a good place from what i've seen. High quality video, HD resolutions.

[Dot50Cal]

A preview is available here:

http://stage6.divx.com/user/Dot50Cal/video/1553128/Super-Stardust-HD-(PS3)-First-3-levels-720p-HD

Click on the "external window" button right next to the volume indicator to see the videos true resolution (1280x720).

[Borman]

Flash can do the job well enough, Im still using it for SD footage, but like you said, streamable HD just cant be beat ;)

[Carnivol]

I'd say stick with flash for streams.

"HD quality" streaming video is just bandwith heavy (infact, I can't even stream that video correctly from my current location, it took half a forever to buffer it + I had to install the darned Stage6 Player Plug-in) and loading times pretty much kills the "streaming experience".

Anyone who wants High Quality/HD would just download the videos provided on the site and play them back in whatever player they prefer themselves.

Also, where would you fit a "HD quality" stream on the front page anyway? If the player itself has borders that're less than... I dunno... 2 or 3 pixelspr side, you can barely fit a 640x### frame on the front page, and that's viewing it in a resolution that is 1280 wide.

[Dot50Cal]

Streams will have their own popup page. Theres some funky side effects when you embed media like that, for instance when we did Quicktime on the main page Biohazard France pointed out that their browser spit out some errors if they didnt have the proper quicktime installed and such.

When the site isnt getting hammered it loads pretty quick, but the slow loading can also be attributed to the fact that the encode linked is 700MB, and not very stream friendly. I can also do SD resolution, which is what I'll probably do for that site in the future.

[Carnivol]

Even though pop-ups do solve the problem, I think it's not a good idea.

It just creates more windows, and with issues like the quicktime "errors", those can easily be fixed.
Like a simple version check, and if it doesn't match up, it'll display a message instead (in the actualy spot where the video would've been, not as a pop-up error), saying that you do not have the right version of whatever software is required.

[Dot50Cal]

How about this, Ill go with divx but if you want to do all the work of taking the videos and making them flv (flash) then I'll put them on the site? This way people will have the choice. Sound ok?

[Roland Orzabal]

This site is cool. Lots of n00bs who share things in common with me!

[Weed]

The DivX idea is neat... for those of you that can run HD video on your computer.

Mine, however, can barely handle 480p, and I'm not alone. I'd say more then half of your visitors can't handle the resolution you are aiming for. I suggest you do both the high quality as well as the flv quality. If you don't, you may lose visitors because of it.

Sometimes the highest quality isn't always the best route.

~Weed

[Dot50Cal]

Carnivol has offered to convert the videos to flv so we should be ok on that end, It'll just be a little bit before that comes a reality. Hes very busy in another country at the moment.

I suppose Ill start getting them up on Stage6 soon, just to offer two streaming solutions.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

[Dot50Cal]

A slight update. Stage 6 has proven itself to be a complete failure so I've fallen back on getting flv's ready. The only thing is I need some help in choosing what design to go with. I have a main theme in mind but I cant decide on the menu portion. So which should I choose?

[Darkmoon]

Frist of all...Rape Time Winner? Dot, I worry more and more.

Secondly, I found the first one a bit easier to read and that little bit more interesting, so I'll say that one.