the Crow Digital Media Blog

Before anyone can watch a video on your Web site (or even on popular video sharing sites like YouTube) a video/media player application must exist somewhere in the mix. The player is what gives you the stop, play, fast forward controls and creates the “window” in which the video plays. Without it, all you have is a video file, kind of like having a VHS tape but no VCR to play it in (an OLD school example I know!)

In this series of upcoming postings, I am going to discuss five such player options and my experiences with them. I initially thought I could cover the material in one exhaustive posting but instead I am going to review each one separately:

• JW FLV Media Player
• Players From Social Media Sites
• Adobe Players
• Quicktime
• Wizzard Media Player

So hang tight and I’ll soon be posting a review of the first player - the JW FLV Media player from Jeroen Wijering.

This is the first of a two part introduction to the technologies empowering both embedded and subscription-based VideoCasts and how your organization can start taking advantage of them today. Don’t worry, I tried hard to make the content understandable to anyone with basic computer knowledge. In part one, I start by introducing data from a February 2008 study published by eMarketer showing some encouraging numbers about how many millions of people are already actively interacting with both audio and video “podcasts” today and what the future holds. Then we dive right into the technology, specifically:

• embedded video versus VideoCasts
• video compression and encoders
• Adobe Flash and Quicktime from Apple including an introduction to H.264
• how to add embedded video to your site

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