Biz-Blogs.com
is the home of a network of business-oriented blog
sites sponsored by
Small-Business-Online.com and the
SBO-Linknet.com
network of websites. These blogs deal with marketing, internet marketing,
website building and design, and an ever growing number of specialty areas
such as real estate, golf, trade show displays, online video and audio tools,
and eventually, many more. Eventually we expect there to be a growing number
of blog sites, each dedicated to a special, narrowly defined business niche.
In the
first segment of this report I
briefly mentioned why I found the Big 3 online video alternatives unsatisfactory
(the Big 3 are Windows Media, Real Media, and Quicktime) for day-to-day online
video use. Essentially it boils down to this: too many versions, too many
variables, too much fragmentation of the "viewing audience". Encoding a simple
video for online streaming can involve creating up to 9 or 10 different versions.
In the process of looking around for an alternative I
stumbled onto Camtasia's implementation of Flash for encoding screen captures.
This produces beautiful low fps movies where there is little change from frame
to frame. But it is unsatisfactory for real video. And its audio controls — at
least as far as I can remember — were quite limited.
A
few weeks ago I started looking in earnest again for a "solution" to some
of these problems. This new found interest in the stalled world of online
media was brought on by a series of projects I took on in the real estate
area. More and more
people are looking to the web as their first source of real estate
information, and most real estate agents and brokers continue to be only
marginally literate in the ways of the web. In theory, at least, that
spells "opportunity".
We are studying
the feasibility of making online audio
and video a significant part of our efforts -- if nothing else
this would set our services apart from the alternatives. We decided this
would involve two types of "programming": video-style "virtual tours", and
information presented in the form of "radio" programs -- what you might
call "talking articles".
Both of these required a
simple technique that could easily be embedded in web pages. Flash seemed
like the answer in both cases, but I didn't have the specifics figured out
for either.
First, I wanted to tackle the
video issue. Other than my own "talking articles" and online tutorials
(mentioned above), I had not seen many workable instances of flash-encoded
video. A quick Google search revealed that there were two companies
seriously developing tools for encoding video in Flash. The first product
is "Squeeze", from Sorenson, a major player in the video encoding
business. Squeeze has been endorsed by Macromedia, and has been integrated
into Macromedia's "Flash Video Kit". Since this seems to require
Dreamweaver (which I do not use), and gives the distinct impression of
pushing users towards the complete (expensive and difficult-to-use)
Macromedia suite of tools, this was not going to be my first choice.
The other product is Flix from a company called
Wildform. At first glance Flix
appeared to be my sort of product. Free-standing, no hidden
Macromedia-oriented agenda, apparently quite flexible, and lots of
built-in "player" designs that should hold off for quite a while the
desire to go into Flash MX and start designing new players.
Flix Pro is not real cheap -- $149 for a tool that encodes
flash video. But it will encode from almost any other format (including .wmv,
.avi, .mpeg, mp4, mov/qt, and audio formats .mp3, .wav, and .wma), and
then nicely wrap it up with one of several special built-in players. Add
on the "Power Players" ($29) and you'll have 135 players to choose from.
Flix Pro is a very nice product which quite
effectively solves my embedded video problem. Now I can throw together a
movie in Ulead MediaStudio Pro, output an all-purpose .avi, and have it
flash-encoded and "player-ized" in no time at all.
Here's an example. I expect
it to be one of the methods we may use for a unique type of
"virtual tour" product we are
working on.
Video encoded with Flix Pro from .wmv file
This video was recorded in the spring of 2001. It was originally encoded for
Windows Media at 320 x 240, 30 fps. The .wmv file was 16 mb. I crunched this
through Flix Pro, encoding it at 15 fps, and reducing the audio quality
slightly.
The player was added by Flix Pro at the same time as the encoding was done.
The .swf file came out at just over 10 mb. There is no significant quality
loss in the .swf version, even with the reduction to 15 fps.
The group was called "Shadow Fax", four guys from 16 -18. The leader is my
nephew, Dan Rochester. Dan continues to work on his music along with his
brothers, Matt and Doh.
Please excuse the camera work. I took this at a live concert standing in the
crowd just in front of the stage holding a little hand held video camera. The
audio is what was picked up by the onboard mic. Pretty amazing, I thought at the
time.
This is not "streaming". It is a "progressive download" which is similar to
streaming, but not as efficient.
Rick Hendershot is the founding publisher of The
Linknet
Marketing Resource Library, and has been dabbling in online video and audio for
a number of years.
