Lorian Network | Building | Multimedia | Movies
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| Introduction to Movies |
Movies, like other objects on a web page, are files that are stored on the web servers disk drive. Web browsers cannot display movies by themselves, they need the help of plug-ins that give them the ability to show a movie of a particular type. That means that the person who is viewing your web page must have the proper plug-in installed for the movie to be visible. | ||
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| Types of Movies | There are two things to consider when adding movies to your site, the type of movie file being used and the type of player plug-in required to play it. Most players can play several different types of movies, but no player seems to be able to play them all. There are also several lesser-know movie types. |
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Common movie file types:
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| Types of Players | The Quicktime player from Apple Computer comes with all Macintosh computers and can be freely download for Windows computers as well. The Windows Media Player comes standard with Windows Operating Systems and a version for Macintosh can be downloaded from Microsoft. Real Media has free downloadable versions for both Macintosh and Windows. All three of these Media Players, Quicktime, Windows Media and Real Player also play many types of audio files as well. |
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Three most commonly used players
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| What are Codecs? | Codec is shorthand for Compressor/Decompressor. Digital movies in their "raw" digital format are very large files. So, movies are compressed using various methods. Each of these methods has it's own unique advantages and disadvantages. Some codec's create smaller movies, but with decreased image quality, some create small files of quality, but decompress slowly, etc. Each of the players above installs a set of standard codec's for that player, but additional codecs can be added to allow a greater range of move file types to be shown. |
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| Quicktime Movie Demo |
To the right is a small sample Quicktime movie embedded into this web page. If we had instead created a link to the movie file, it might have been displayed on a separate page, opened in an external Qucktime player program, or downloaded to disk. What actually happens when a user tries to connect to a multimedia file depends on how the preferences in their browser has been set up. Ultimately, you have no control over that. Movie files for the Windows Media Player and the Real Media Player can be handled in a similar fashion, embedded into the page or handled as a link. |
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| What is movie streaming? |
Streaming movies are NOT downloaded as files to the user's computer. Rather, the movie player plug-in or player establishes an internet connection with a special streaming-server and plays the movies as it is sent. | ||
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