Preparing Movie Trailers

Trailers are short films created by production companies to promote their films. The contract Contoso makes with a film company will include a description of the material to be supplied by them. As part of the agreement, they will make sure to receive a high-quality digital videotape of the entire film. They will also make sure to receive any appropriate publicity material, including stills, written information, and any promotional videos and trailers that can be used on the site. The contract will also include permissions to use the material.

When end users come to the site, they can browse the featured information on the home page, which includes special movie rental information and hot movie topics, or they can browse or search for a specific movie. After locating a movie, they link to the details page for the movie. On the details page, they can read reviews and movie information, view the movie, or they can view the trailer. When they click the link to view a trailer, Windows Media Player opens and the trailer streams to the user. Custom versions of the Player may be created for special content.

To implement movie trailers area on the site, we will need the following components:

• Trailers

• Production workstation

• Hosting service

• Presentation enhancements

• Web design

Trailers

Windows Media files will be encoded from videotape supplied by the film production companies or distributors. Contoso will request tapes in the Digital Betacam format, which is a standard used throughout the film and broadcast industries. This format will provide a high-quality transfer of a film. The trailers will be encoded at multiple bit rates. Typically, a streaming site provides two or three versions of a file or stream encoded for different bandwidths, such as 28.8 Kbps, 100 Kbps, and 300 Kbps. End users can then choose the version that is most appropriate for their Internet connection.

By using Windows Media, you can encode one file that contains multiple streams encoded at different bit rates. With Windows Media 9 Series, you can select different audio and video codec settings for each stream, as well as different frame sizes and other properties. The end user does not have to select a bandwidth; Windows Media Services selects the appropriate bit rate automatically based on current network conditions.

Production Workstation

To convert material on videotape to Windows Media files, Contoso Movies Online will need one or more production workstations. Each workstation must include VCRs to play back tapes from the studios, a computer to capture and encode the files, an audio mixer to adjust audio levels, a high-quality computer monitor, and audio speakers. The computer will use a video capture card that provides an SDI port to capture digital audio and video from the Digital Betacam.

Hosting Service

Contoso will use a third-party hosting service and CDN to host their Web and Windows Media-based content. With a CDN, end users connect to the edge servers that are closest to them, rather than one centralized server. The result is that end users receive a more reliable stream and therefore a better viewing experience. Contoso found that contracting with a hosting service and CDN is much less expensive and easier to manage than attempting to host the content themselves. Trailer files will be uploaded to the hosting service FTP site, and from there the host will propagate the files according to their content management system.

Presentation Enhancements

When end users choose to stream a trailer, it will open and play in Windows Media Player. A button will be displayed below the video frame that users can click to send them im-mediately to the rental page for the movie advertised in the trailer. In addition, Contoso will enhance the presentation of special trailers, features, and information in the Player with borders and HTMLView. These two Player features enable them to display collections of image files, digital media, text, and interactive elements in the Now Playing pane of the full mode Windows Media Player. The composition and functionality of the enhancements are implemented with script.

Web Design

ASP pages will be used to make the site easier to manage. For example, instead of creating individual details pages for every movie, Web designers can create an ASP page template and dynamically populate the page from information in a database when an end user accesses it. ASP pages will also be used to gather end user information.