Quicktime insert

Question

hi guys, i am troubleshooting a flash file issue on my site. for some reason, people in the uk cannot stream my flashfiles from my site. The rest of the world has no problem but europe seems to have trouble. I want to try a quicktime movie to see if it is a flv / flash issue or a streaming issue. However, when I select 'insert' there is no menu for quicktime movie. there is a menu for flash but not for quicktime.
my question is..... how do I embed a quicktime movie in one of my webpages? so i can get my friend to watch it in the UK?
thank you

Answer 1

The main problem with your video is that the bitrate is far too high for Internet download.
The video file is 47.5MB for a 49 sec. video. That roughly translates into a bitrate of around 7700kbps. Nearly 8 times too large if you want reliable downloading on most connections.
As for getting controls to show, most examples that you see posted on the Internet, including the W3schools use this line
<param name="controller" value="false">
and
controller="false"
as an example of not showing the controls. Now of the 20 billion video players on the Internet, less than 1 % don't have controls displayed. So why in the world would nearly every QT example you see on the net, always show "controller false"? Show us how to display the controls!!!
You would assume that changing it to "true" would make the controls display. (you still have it "false" by the way).
Personally I think that it's a conspiracy by Apple to hide the fact that it's darn complicated to get the controls to show! But I digress.
Your video does eventually download and play, it's just that the file is so huge it seems like it's not doing anything.
For more on video bitrate:
Video bit rate
One of the principle of goal setting is to "Begin with the end in mind". In this case it'll be very hard to give good recommendations because the end is not defined. So I'll just make a few assumptions and you can correct me as needed.
First, I'll assume that since you are converting to Flash, you want to deliver this video over the Internet. If that's true, then we'll have to make some assumptions on the Internet connection download speeds of your potential viewers. Let's just say that most have at least a 1.5Mb connection or faster.
OK, that would mean that a video bitrate of half that should usually provide a video download that is not interupped by buffering (most of the time anyway). So assuming a video bitrate of 750kbps, what would the optimum display dimensions be?
Before we decide, here's a little info about bitrate. For highest quality playback, the video bitrate is tied directly to the display dimensions. That is, the larger the display, the more incoming data is required to properly display the video. Think of bitrate in terms of a can of paint. If you have 1 quart of paint, you might be able to do a very nice job on a 32 X 24 foot area. But if you try to stretch that same amount of paint out over a 64 X 48 foot area, the coverage will not be nearly as good and you get poor results.
In the same way, a video displayed at 640 X 480 pixels will require 4 times the bitrate as a video displayed at 320 X 240 pixels to produce the same quality. So for example a video with a bitrate of 100kbps, displayed at 160 X 120 will produce the same quality results as a video with a bitrate of 1600kbps if displayed at 640 X 480.
So to boil it all down, video bitrates of 750kbps, even up to 1000kbps can usually get delivered of the Internet on most high speed connections. Higher bit rates may work for really fast connections but will cause problems for viewers with slower connections. Video display size has a direct bearing on the final quality. In the 750 to 1000kbps range, display size should be kept around 450 or 500 width max (and whatever height the aspect ratio calls for). Yes it can be displayed larger, but the quality will suffer.
Sound like your audio settings are fine, especially for Internet delivery.
As for framerate, maintain the original raw video framerate for best results. So if the video was shot at 24fps, leave it.
As for video converters, do you have the Flash 8 Video Converter? It works just fine for video to be delivered over the Internet. Remember, you are taking a Cadillac version of video (h.264 HD) and stuffing it into a Chevy body to get it to work over the Internet.
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator