To view the video, you need to have QuickTime (version 4 or later) installed on your computer. Free version for Macintosh and Windows computers are available from Apple. Linux users can avail themselves of the CrossOver Plugin from CodeWeavers Inc. Unfortunately, there's no player available for other Unix variants. If you are wondering why you need QuickTime, see below.
Download and install QuickTime (which includes the QuickTime plugin for your browser) and come back to this site.
Since different people have different speed connections to the Internet, the video comes in 4 different “flavours”, depending on what you told QuickTime your connection speed is. Make sure you set the correct connection speed in the QuickTime Preferences (accessible from the Quicktime Player application -- see these instructions for help).
In either case, you can change the connection speed setting in the QuickTime Preferences and reload the Web page to receive the “right” version of the video. If you decide to experiment with these settings to achieve the best result, you'll want to know that the four version of the video are designed for
The highest quality video is, of course, the one designed for the highest connection speed. Not surprisingly, it's also the biggest file.
If you're on a modem line, you've probably noticed that the quality of the video stinks. Look at it this way: your analog phone line was designed to carry voice data. Now you are trying to use it to carry voice and video too. I've done the best I can, but it's a miracle that it works at all. If you really want to watch video over the internet, you'll have to subscribe to a Cable or DSL service.
Another problem people have encountered has to do with the Transport Settings in the QuickTime Preferences. Go to the Connection tab, and click on Transport Setup, Some firewalls block the ports needed for quicktime streaming to function. So you might try changing your settings from (say)
Transport Protocol: UDP
RTSP Port ID: 554
to
Transport Protocol: HTTP
Port ID: 80
or vice versa.
Other miscellaneous problems can frequently also be “cured” by reloading the web page.
. . . should be self-explanatory. There's a Start/Stop
(
/
)
button and a
progress bar which indicates where in the video you are. By dragging the
knob in the progress bar, you can skip to an arbitrary point in the video.
The server will take a few seconds to “renegotiate” the
connection and then the video will start playing at the new point. The
next few seconds of the video may look strange, but the problem will
“correct itself” the next time the video hits a key frame
(don't ask!).
To the right of the progress bar is a popup menu of sections of the video.
Initially, it looks like
.
Hold down the mouse button on it
to pop up the menu; then you can drag the mouse to the section you want to
view. These sections roughly correspond to the chronology in the lower
frame of the web page.
There are three streaming video protocols in widespread use:
All three offer free players for Macintosh and Windows. Real even has free players for various flavours of Unix. But, on the server side, Real and Microsoft charge hefty fees for their Streaming Server software. And Microsoft adds insult to injury, by making their Server software run only under Windows NT (gaack!).
Apple's Streaming Server software is free (Open Source, in fact!), and runs on a variety of platforms (MacOSX, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows NT, . . .). Moreover, the software for creating QuickTime streaming content is free (or nearly free) if you have a Macintosh.
This video was converted from VHS to DV video using a Formac Studio converter box, captured and edited using Apple's iMovie and exported as a 22GB DV movie. From this Master, I used QuickTime Pro to produce the compressed videos for streaming. Each video was compressed using the Sorenson Video Codec and the Qualcomm PureVoice Audio Codec. The resulting hinted movie files range in size from 81 MB (for the 28.8 modem version) to 722 MB (for the 512 Mbps Cable/DSL version).
Still having trouble? Questions or comments? Email me.