Progressive download?

[teamdork]

Hello,
I would like to make some videos for the web that will start playing before they are totally downloaded into RAM, but I do not need to use real time streaming. I would like someone using WMP to be able to click on a video from my web page, wait for a short buffer, then see the video start as the rest is still being downloaded, instead of having to download the whole thing before they can watch it. From what I have read this is called: Progressive Download.

How do you make this happen? Is it a property of the encoding, or the websever? Or the browser?

Since it will be buffered, can you use a huge bitrate?

Thank You for the help

[thecoalman]

You don't do nothing, just put a link to the file, last time I tried direct link doesn't work for MPG... something about apatent or along those lines. It will work for WMV files though.

You can embed it in the page as well, this works for any type of file AFAIK providing of course the user has the codec.

<embed width="640" height="405" src="http://www.40lbhead.com/headfiles/albums/video/rockfest2005_empire_wandt.wmv" autostart="true" showstatusbar="true" >

There's a lot of parameters you can set as to how the player looks and what is available. you can even make it just the video if you want with no visible player.

Since it will be buffered, can you use a huge bitrate?

You can use whatever bitrate you want, if it's huge they will still have to wait until it bufferes enough. The above file is linked to 500kbps file. As you can see that is about allyou need for good quality. I can play that full screen and it looks pretty good. Not as good as the original but at 500kbps who's going to complain.

[zoobie]

I think he wants it to display as it's downloading. I think that's a streaming option in Windows .wmv encoder

Good tut here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/enclfc.aspx

[thecoalman]

I think he wants it to display as it's downloading.

It does for a direct link or if you embed it with the code I used above. You can for example also set autostart="false" and it won't begin playing until the user hits the play button.

Click this link, it should open up in WMP providing you have WMV associated with WMP, buffer and begin playing. It's all done by the player and is automatic unless the user has changed the defaults. With the code it should work regardless of what the user has set...

http://www.40lbhead.com/headfiles/albums/video/rockfest2005_empire_wandt.wmv

[zoobie]

Ahh...
Seems I read all kinds of streaming options in wmv encoder
I just have them right click and save target as

The Empire, baby... ha ha
Some good chord changes in there

[thecoalman]

I just have them right click and save target as

You need to do that with MPEG (possibly other formats) unless you embed it in the page.

The Empire, baby... ha ha
Some good chord changes in there

That song (and a few others) gets some local air play on one station that actually plays local music. Even during prime air play time during the day. The second one hit the top 100 on the alternative charts on the original MP3 many moons ago.

http://www.garageband.com/song?%7Cpe1%7CS8LTM0LdsaSlaVi1ag