Downloadable video

[D8TA]

Hello, I am very new to this and new to this board. Anyways my question is this, I help out my church by hosting and taking care of a website for the church. One thing they had mentioned and would like to try is to take the Sunday sermons and place them on the website for visitors are members to download and then view using Windows Media Player or some other player. The problem I have is the sermons would probably be recorded using a VHS camcorder and I don't know how to even begin to start. Can anyone please help? What kind of equipment do you recommend? How if any can I do this with a VHS camcorder? Most importantly I am looking a cheap price since this will be out of my pocket. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. One person I talked to said to get a streaming server. This wouldn't be neccessary would it, if all visitors would do is download them? The sermons usually are about 30-45 mins in length. I hope I have provided enough information, if not let me know. Thanks again and God Bless.

[KingJohn]

Whew !

Ok so you already have a cam corder, so all you need now is a PC capture card. From there you can transfer the video to your PC.

Now that you have it on your PC, you have to decide what format to place it on the web as.

Uncompressed Video/audio would be huge, it would take people a very long time to download, so it needs to be compressed. The most popular used around the web is the QuickTime format "Legal "

If you converted the video to the QuickTime format (.MOV) and placed that on an internet site, then any visitor would be able to view it online.

View/download would both take the same speed...

If the visitor did not have the QuickTime codec, then the web page would automatically download the QuickTime plug in. Or you could link to it.

"Cant see the movie click here"

The most popular around here is the DivX codec, and although there are plenty of legal ones, it would not be as easy to use as QuickTime.

1, record to VHS
2, transfer to PC via capture card
3, convert to QuickTime MOV
4, upload to website
5, create a web page with QuickTime code

There are many other ways, but I think in this case QuickTime might be the best option for you

Quicktime
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/

Capture Cards
http://www.hauppauge.com

[BJ_M]

yes - quicktime is a great format ... windows media is also highly compresable .. both are (now) based on mpeg4 as is divx 5 -- there is not a whole lot of differance between them ..

i would still go with Quicktime conforming to QT version 3 or 4 for max compatability..