To view video on the web, you must have a media player. Regardless of whether you are allowing your users to download, progressively downloading, or streaming media files, users must have a media player that supports the media type you're offering on your web pages. Many sites offer media content in three formatsWindows Media Player, Real Media, and QuickTimeand a fourth, Flash video, is slowly gaining steam and making its mark on the web. The world of media players is constantly changing. As of this writing, Apple has announced QuickTime 7, Microsoft is shipping Media Player 10, Real is allowing free downloads of its RealPlayer 10.5, and Macromedia has introduced Flash Player 8. Today's media players play much more than video. Microsoft's Media Player and Real's RealPlayer allow direct purchases and subsequent downloads of music and movies directly from their players. Even better, these players are now directly integrating mobile devices such as Apple's iPod, Creative's Nomad series, and even Windows Media Player for Pocket PC. Beyond that, most media players are interoperable, meaning that they'll all play each others media types with few to no problems and little quality degradation. RealMediaRealNetworks (Real) was the first to offer a streaming server and is considered the grandfather of streaming video. As of this writing, it has the largest part of the market share with more than 55% of users using the RealPlayer product in some form or fashion. RealPlayer supports video, images, text, Flash movies, and audio. The three primary software components of RealMedia are listed here:
Real is undoubtedly the pioneer in streaming video and by far offers the most versatile media player in that its RealPlayer product is supported by more platforms than any other media player on the market today. The RealPlayer is available for Windows, Macintosh, Unix, Linux, and OS/2. Beyond compatibility, the RealPlayer offers subscription-based plans to view certain content from CNN, ABCNEWS, E!, and FoxSports, to name a few. QuickTimeApple was ahead of its time back in the early 1990s when it introduced an application called QuickTime. QuickTime was the first application that enabled you to play digital video on a computer. Today, QuickTime sets the standard in multimedia playback, offering a clean, brushed-aluminum interface for viewing video on the web. Often, people confuse QuickTime with the QuickTime Video format. The QuickTime Player is a separate application dedicated to viewing different content including QuickTime Video, Flash movies, Windows Media, 3D objects (QuickTime Virtual RealityQTVR), MP3, MPEG, and much more. Like Real, QuickTime has three main software components:
QuickTime enjoys roughly 62% of the market (http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer) for rich media and is the top choice for graphics professionals. QuickTime offers the highest-quality video playback, and because of its support for MPEG-4, QuickTime is quickly becoming a standard for quality-conscious developers. Currently, QuickTime Player is available for Mac OS and Windows. For more information on MPEG-4 and Apple's contributions to the standard, visit Apple's Web site at http://www.apple.com/mpeg4. Windows MediaEnjoying a large share of the market and installed on all Windows operating systems, Windows Media Player has become an extremely viable platform for viewing video both on your desktop and directly through the web browser. Like Real's RealPlayer, the Windows Media Player has the capability to play numerous video formats such as ASF, ASX, AVI, MPG, MOV, and WMV; it can also play audio formats such as MP3, AIF, and AU. Software involved with Windows Media includes the following:
Flash VideoAs I've already mentioned, the slow evolution of video on the web is caused in large part by the variety of media players, platforms, and user configurations. Viewing a high-quality video clip over the web just seems out of reach at this time. Flash Video (represented by the FLV extension), aims to obliterate that stigma. Supported by Flash Player 7 and above, Flash Video offers technological and creative benefits that allow designers to create immersive, rich experiences that fuse video with data, graphics, sound, and dynamic interactive control. Because it enjoys roughly 98% of the market share, the benefits to using Flash Video are extensive. First, no additional plug-ins are required of the user. As long as the user has the Flash Player plug-in version 7 or higher, viewing Flash Video isn't a problem. Second, and possibly more important, Flash Video files load quickly and provide a rich and immersive experience for the end user. Because Flash Player treats Flash Video as just another media type, you can layer, script, and control video just like any other object in a SWF file. As it relates to Dreamweaver, Flash Video can be embedded directly in a Web page. What this means is that the file plays directly in the page as opposed to launching a pop-up window that can interrupt the user experience. As you'll see later in the chapter, creating Flash Video is a snap and generally involves encoding a video file to the Flash Video format. After the file has been encoded, the resulting FLV file can be embedded directly into a Web page using Dreamweaver. |