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Help with Video Downloads

Video footage is new to the Noumea Image Library, and is being offered on an experimental basis. For the technically inquisitive (or more skilled than I), there is a short synopsis of the approaches I've tried and perceived tradeoffs, below. For those who simply want to see the darn things, here are some thoughts/suggestions:

• These videos are in Microsoft Windows Media Player ("wmv") format. To view them, you must have software that can play Media Player-type files. Naturally, Microsoft makes such software, as do other third-party companies. Here are links to Media Player viewers for Windows, Linux, MacIntosh operating systems:
  • Windows, Mac, Solaris: Windows Media Player 9 Series (Microsoft)
  • Linux: MPlayer
• The video files are big: 3-5 mb (megabytes) each. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, a single video may take 5-25 minutes to download. Be patient.
• If you have a slow connection and your browser offers you a choice of saving the video locally (as opposed to "opening" or playing it), I suggest you do so. Save the video to your hard drive or desktop, and view it from there.

  Note: if you save the video to your hard drive, you are welcome to view it as many times as you wish, but you cannot e-mail or otherwise send the video to others. These videos are licensed from British Pathe, and distribution beyond this web site is prohibited. As I've paid good money for this license, I will happily help British Pathe enforce it.

• If you have a slow connection and your browser immediately opens Window Media Player to attempt to play the video, I suggest you click the player's Pause button immediately, allow it to download the full video (wait until the "Buffering..." message at the bottom of the player goes away), and then click the Play button. This will enable you to watch the full video uninterrupted.
• Q: Why do I have to click a button on your site to see the video?

  A: So that I know you're a human, and not badly behaved software bulk-downloading the site and annoying both myself and my hosting company.

Technical Mutterings

I actually have had these videos for months, and have been flailing around, trying to decide on the best way to present them on the web site. There are basically two approaches (that I know of):

1. Simply download the entire video file to the visitor for them to view as they wish.
2. Put the videos on a true media streaming server and serve 'em up from there.

I actually do have a streaming server set up, and could easily stream these videos. But I decided not to because to make videos stream reasonably smoothly for dial-up visitors (on 56K or slower connections) means making great sacrifices in the overall quality of the image ... or at least that's been my experience.

So, instead, I've gone the simplier route, and simply download the file directly to the visitor (over HTTP), for them to view as they wish. This is still less than ideal. For example, if one's browser immediately opens a player and begins downloading the video for display, it will not cache the video intelligently. This means that if you want to review some of the video, you must download the entire thing all over again. It also means that you may not be able to fast-forward, reverse, or even save the video file to your local disk for later viewing.

My personal feeling is that neither option is very good, but suspect part of the problem may be my own inexperience with serving video on the web. If there are any multi-media gurus out there reading this, and you know a solution to all my woes in this regard, please let me know.