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Thread: Video in a large business environment - Help

  1. #1
    gotta bounce solomatrix's Avatar
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    Video in a large business environment - Help

    My business (school district, multiple campuses, ~20,000 users) is looking to implement a standardized way to encode and distribute all video through our intranet, and I'm in charge. The only requirements are that the solution must support unicast and multicast streams and be in a format easily available 90%+ of all computers on the network (ie no obscure codec that needs to be manually downloaded).

    I'm thinking the top choices would be Flash and Quicktime, though I've heard Real mentioned in high regard.

    Has anyone had experience with anything like this? What are some plus/minuses for the different products? What kind of up-front cost are we looking at? Are there any general tips regardless of technology used that could help me? I'm open for any and all insight and advice anyone has on this subject.

    Thank you.
    Solo

  2. #2
    Junior Member
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    using flash

    probably you will find here more fanatics of flash video than elsewhere so is very difficult to give a fair answer.

    Flash video are very useful with powerpoint-like videos, for instance.

    The problem is, in my opinion, a crowd of max 20000 simultaneus users trying to see the video at the same time.
    You will have to face client bandwidth and server throughput very soon.
    Since you know your users' location, you could deploy low resolution short video on your intranet and also deploy more complex video on cd's.

    To use Flash video you need

    videocamera DV with firewire connection (or USB2.0)
    Flash mx,
    Sorenson Squeeze (or Quick Time professional)

  3. #3
    Wildform Moderator
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    Hi.
    If player compatibility is your main concern than Flash is the way to go. Flash video can be viewed on over 90% of computers without requiring any additional downloads. It is also easy to use, offers many useful features (e.g. embedded links, preloaders, etc.) and is easily deployed in many different situations.
    Quicktime has the lowest player penetration of any of the video formats.
    Windows Media currently provides the highest quality and has very wide adoption on PCs (not Macs).
    I don't like Real video, but it has its proponents and they have released their source code in the Helix project.
    FYI, if you are looking for a way for your users to upload or send numerous formats to a central computer or server for conversion to Flash video (SWF and FLV), you may want to check out our product, the Flix Engine.
    jb

  4. #4
    gotta bounce solomatrix's Avatar
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    Thank you for your replies. I've definantly narrowed the field down to Flash and WMV (or WMP compatable format).

    Jon: The Filx Engine looks very promising. I'd like to know a little bit more about how it actually works (ie how users upload a file and have it encoded). Also minimum specs show:
    • Flash 7+ (we have this on all images)
    • QuickTime 6+ Player (we have at least 5.5 on all images)
    • Windows Media Player 9+ (we dont have this, usually just default settings on most images)

    Are these specs for each station wanting to view the movie or just for converting it? Can the server do all of the encoding? Does something have to be installed on each user's box to use this product?

    Thank you for any help. Let me know if I would be better off asking this elsewhere.
    Solo

  5. #5
    Wildform Moderator
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    Hi.
    For more information or a free demo of the Flix Engine, contact us directly here:
    http://www.wildform.com/contact/
    Basically the Flix Engine allows you to control the features of our Flix Pro Flash video encoder. It provides full COM Automation support for access from Visual Basic, C++, Delphi, .NET, Java (via COM Bridge), VBScript, ASP, Microsoft Office, PHP (on Windows) Python, and any other COM enabled container application or programming language. We also provide SDK documentation in HTML for COM objects and samples for using COM objects.
    It runs on any Windows OS on a client machine or server.
    You need the free Quicktime player and free Windows Media Player to encode videos (as well as any required codecs). The viewer only needs Flash to view it.
    Flix encodes MX SWF videos (requires Flash 6), MX FLV videos (requires Flash 7 when using progressive download, or Flash 6 when using the Flashcom server). It also exports a lower quality SWF that is compatible with players going back to Flash 3.
    jb

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