Thread

Moderator’s note: Moved to the Lounge.

What is everyone’s opinion on whether or not to serve Quicktime videos vs. Flash?

I used to have QT files on my site, but many complained that they couldn’t see the videos (a lot of QT-haters, some didn’t update, etc.).  I switched over to Flash using the FLVPlugin which works GREAT except for two things:

1. In the RSS feed, nothing shows up.  Well originally, something did show up, namely the EE code.  I managed to hide it by processing it through allow_eecode, but now RSS readers see nothing.

2. Iphone users can’t watch the videos now (sry, huge iphone fan)

What is the prevailing wisdom on what kind of videos to serve?

My rule of thumb is do you want visitors to Download/portable vs. stream. Although flash is ‘downloadable’ it is a bit more tedious for avg. visitor.

Chances are you can get flash hosted a lot easier than you can quicktime and gain on bandwidth usage. QT tends to be larger file.
About haters of QT…well, I would not worry about this. They belong with people who refuse to update IE6.

So why not both? Place flash on youtube or something and QT on your server?

My rule of thumb is do you want visitors to Download/portable vs. stream. Although flash is ‘downloadable’ it is a bit more tedious for avg. visitor.

Same here. I have some sites with QT but most are Flash (in one form or another), simply because Flash is everywhere and QT less so.

About haters of QT…well, I would not worry about this. They belong with people who refuse to update IE6.

Funny.

I was checking some stats today and found that IE6 still accounts for between 20% and 30% of IE usage. That’s a pity.

So why not both? Place flash on youtube or something and QT on your server?

I’ve done something similar, but recently more YouTube which also does H.264 non-Flash streaming.

I prefer Quicktime over Flash. The overall quality is appealing to me, because I do video editing. The workflow from post-production to distributing on the web is much simpler with quicktime.

About haters of QT…well, I would not worry about this. They belong with people who refuse to update IE6.

No, they belong with the people who can’t stand qt, and don’t like apple software.

that’s really an uneducated, and condescending statement to make.

beyond that, anyone managing a website that says they wouldn’t worry about it is someone I sure wouldn’t want managing my traffic

As for flash being more tedious? i think that’s WAY wrong. in fact, I’d venture to say that the vast majority of users would use an flv player on a website much more than qt.

I don’t know how buffering a video is more tedious than loading a qt player at all. and since 95% of web users are using windows, they already have flash installed in almost all instances. not so with quicktime

I prefer Quicktime’s video quality but there’s no arguing with Flash penetration in the browser market. But why not give your user a choice and do both?

As e-man said above you could do both. Actually you could do both without doing any more work as the Flash player will play .mov files (and many other types of QT file) so just serve up the .mov file with the Flash player and if they don’t have the player you can just server up the movie file on its own which will play via whatever method you want to play QT by.

Best wishes,

Mark

I prefer Quicktime’s video quality but there’s no arguing with Flash penetration in the browser market. But why not give your user a choice and do both?

Easy with Flash since it plays everything these days. The problem is making every user happy by providing whatever video format they prefer. That’s extra work, of course.

How close are we to a single video “standard” format that plays fine in any browser on any platform? HTML 5 won’t have penetration for years.

I’ve been adding jQuery and various media plugins in recent sites.

that’s really an uneducated, and condescending statement to make.

beyond that, anyone managing a website that says they wouldn’t worry about it is someone I sure wouldn’t want managing my traffic

It was a joke…relax.

And it was funny. Instead of setting my hair on fire, I laughed.

😉

:lol: We don’t want that fire to spread on the ee t-shirt. I might have hit the wrong string with Thompson.

I do deploy both on desktop units for IE and FF just to avoid ‘nagging users’. QT and Flash…which neither are installed by default on IE6 nor update to IE7 will do. Quicktime seems to scare away avg. users while there are still sites powered by flash so I do get more ‘I can’t see this site’ requests which in users mind is a bigger problem than not having QT to see a single video.

As for flash being more tedious?

Yes, meant from perspective of being able to “download” the file vs. quicktime.

that’s really an uneducated, and condescending statement to make.

beyond that, anyone managing a website that says they wouldn’t worry about it is someone I sure wouldn’t want managing my traffic

It was a joke…relax.

Wow sorry, it went right over my head (not unusual)

OK then, with respect to ExpressionEngine - what’s the best format to use to serve up in an RSS feed?

The current FLVplugin I’m using doesn’t do it - I guess I need to research serving up video in Rss feeds.  I notice in the feeds I read, that YouTube videos come up inline no problem.

Wow sorry, it went right over my head (not unusual)

Been there.

OK then, with respect to ExpressionEngine - what’s the best format to use to serve up in an RSS feed?

Are you serving up videos in the RSS feed?

I’d like to - video clips in the middle of articles.