Not too long ago, if you were to ask a techie guy what he thought of putting video on your website you would probably get a cringe and a far-too-indepth explanation of why it is a bad idea. The truth is, video is a highly effective means of communicating and it has become an integral part of the web. YouTube and other mainstream video hosting services have allowed people to post anything and simply link to it – so even the simplest websites can now contain video elements. What was the problem with getting videos on the web to start with? Bandwidth. What? Bandwidth, which controls how much information can be “downloaded” to your computer at once.
When I worked at IBM Global Services in the mid-90s, we used video primarily for CD-ROMs and Touch-screen Kiosks. Even then I had to work hard to make it play smoothly. Frame rates, Key frames, Bit rates, File formats, Bandwidth – they all seemed to be part of an anti-video army trying to cut your innovative ideas to the quick. Bandwidth has opened up with highspeed internet connections, and the technology to show videos has kept right in pace with bandwidth. The problems with video today aren’t very different than they were 10 years ago – but the tools have come along way. You still see examples of choppy, jerky, blurry, tin-can sounding videos. People who are putting video content on the web seem to be missing some crucial information – so let me break down video on the web for you.
A video is a series of pictures played quick enough to give the illusion of motion. A film in a movie theater shows 24 “frames” every second. This is known as the frame rate of the video – how many frames are shown each second. More frames per second (FPS) = smoother perceived motion. Television video or DVD players run around 30 FPS. High definition videos run between 50-60 FPS. On the web, the more FPS in your video, the more information has to be downloaded to play the video smoothly. A slow connection means waiting for the video to “buffer” or download enough to start the video playing. Typically, if your frame rate is too high, the video can hang up (or start and stop repeatedly). So, what to do? You try to find a happy medium – usually web video plays pretty smoothly at 15-30 FPS.
A common way to control video playback is by watching and controlling the data rate (bit rate) – how many bits and bytes of data are being served per second. How large the video displays (640×480 or 320×240 pixels are common sizes) and how many FPS make up part of the bit rate. How much the video changes from frame to frame also has an impact on how much data the video is trying to send you – lots of motion means more pixels redrawn in each frame. Mpeg compression tries to reuse or freeze areas that don’t change from frame to frame. The quality of the sound is the other factor that affects the bit rate. This table gives you an idea of general bit rate quality of videos uploaded to YouTube. When I’m posting videos for a real estate client, I target 400kbps to make sure people can see the video with minimal skipping and pauses. I try to use the Flash video format because about 97% of people have flash players installed on their computers.
How can you have more control of your video quality for the web? There are several conversion tools, but I’d recommend trying before buying. Many don’t allow you to change compression settings, or they may not do a great job of converting your video into a web-friendly format. I use Adobe FlashCS4′s Media Encoder to generate my Flash videos, but if that’s not an option for you, I’d say that it might not hurt to invest in a decent converter. Good general advise (and to save me backlash from recommending any one) is to get a trial version and test it on your video.
If you take the time to learn a little more about video anatomy, you can really use “multimedia” as it should be used – full interactive experiences with images, text and effective videos that truly engage your intended audience. Video is here to stay – it’s been proven as a far more effective way to communicate than text or imagery alone. There’s nothing cooler than landing on a site that really engages me in as many ways as it can – including video.
