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Thread: Multimedia
Number of posts in this thread: 10 (In chronological order)
From: Paul Cowan
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 12:59AM
Subject: Multimedia
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Hi all,
We are currently debating how to best approach to displaying multimedia
content that will be streamed to the browser. That being video and audio
files. I
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 8:44AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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> For audio, do they use wma files, or do they use mp3?
In terms of device accessibility, the more generic and non-proprietary the
format, the better. So, in that sense, MP3 and MPG would be the better bets.
We may start using video on our site, and I'm leaning towards using Flash
Video simply due to the consistency of flash across platforms.
-Darrel
From: Johnson, Mike
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 10:12AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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We've had very positive responses to our use of Flash video on our website:
http://www.justice.eku.edu/futureStudents/
http://www.justice.eku.edu/about/
and in our online courses: http://www.justice.eku.edu/odems/sample1.asp
I'm in the process of working out the captioning for FLV now.
From: RC
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 10:20AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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Is there a tutorial for the flash I can use out there?
And one for setting up the captioning?
Thank you,
RC
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 10:25AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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> Is there a tutorial for the flash I can use out there?
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro/video/
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/video.html
-Darrel
P.S. Please trim your replies.
From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 10:31AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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In general, these are my recommendations:
- Generic formats, such as mp3, avi, and mpeg can be played by most major
players. You don't have to worry about the end user having a specific
player. However, these formats don't provide as high of compression as
proprietary formats.
- When possible, allow the media to be played in the stand-alone media
player as they are much more accessible to the keyboard and screen readers
than media that is embedded into a Web page.
- Provide a transcript for audio and a transcript and captions for video.
- Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and RealPlayer specific formats will
need distinct links for each media file.
- We use Windows Media Player and Quicktime, as this hits about 99% of
users. If you have a Mac, you have Quicktime. If you have a Windows
computer, you have Windows Media Player. We've used Realplayer in the
past, but their licensing costs for their streaming server are outrageous.
- If you are looking at streaming long sections of audio or video, then
simply linking to a file on your Web server may not be the best approach.
A true streaming server will provide better results, will save bandwidth,
and gives the end user the ability to only download the portions of the
file he/she wants to view. We use Windows Media Server with Windows Server
2003 and Darwin Streaming Server (free) on a G4 Macintosh. We also have a
few videos streaming off of RealServer basic, but they are soon to go away.
- Flash video is very universal, but it is not truly streaming (i.e., the
user must download the entire file to listen to the last few seconds). It
works very well for shorter video segments, but for long videos, it may
not work as well as a true streaming format. There are no standards for
captioning Flash video.
Jared Smith
WebAIM.org
From: Johnson, Mike
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 10:31AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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> And one for setting up the captioning?
For the captioning, I'm trying to use HiCaption from HiSoftware. They make a component for Flash that will read an external caption file and synch it to your swf. http://www.hisoftware.com/hmccflash/index.html
Mike
From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 10:38AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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I cannot get the content of your video using my screen reader.
There is information provided in the video that isn't provided in the
audio track. Is that what you are mentioning in regards to "FLV"?
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Thu, Mar 31 2005 11:17AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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Jared Smith wrote:
> - Flash video is very universal, but it is not truly streaming (i.e.,
> the user must download the entire file to listen to the last few
> seconds). It works very well for shorter video segments, but for long
> videos, it may not work as well as a true streaming format.
Just a small addition to this point: unless I'm mistaken, you can get
actual streaming in Flash via the Communication Server package.
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashcom/
--
Patrick H. Lauke
_____________________________________________________
re
From: Paul Cowan
Date: Fri, Apr 01 2005 6:24AM
Subject: Re: Multimedia
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Hi,
Thanks for all the replies and I do hate to ask further questions, but I