What are Web Videos?

Very basic White Paper on videos for the Web
by S. Olivier Rittmann

Web Videos have become rather fashionable for companies as well as private web site hosts to present their products and services in a more animated fashion.
Some years ago you were only able to view videos after actually downloading the files onto your local hard drive. This often took quite a long time seen as the avi. or mov. files were not highly compressed and rather large.
Video compression has become a much talked about issue and the  MJPG standard quickly made way to more sophisticated codecs such as MPEG2. As a result to this development large video files were able to be stored on much smaller space without massive visual decay. You could compare it to the evolution of audio data packed and condensed onto CDs as opposed to Records. A CD holds much less frequencies of sound than a record but you cannot really hear the difference. Why? Most of the "inaudible" frequencies are simply omitted. So with video you try to omit invisible frequencies or non-changing parts of a picture in order to use less memory space on the data carrier.
As video files got smaller the idea of actually broadcasting footage "live" over the Net surfaced. Streaming video was the name of this concept. The server would actually send video information bit by bit to the viewer without him having to download a file. The bits however should be ideally sent chronologically and close together via the same route for the movie to play smoothly. This is easier said than done seen as our little WWW constanly rerouts information through various computers on the way.
Due to the nature of the World Wide Web and its increasing popularity for exchange for information and data (usefull and not so...) the bandwiths for transporting data have decreased. Imagine a hose which some years ago only had to transport water for one household. Now it would have to transport Beer, OJ and Milk to a whole community. The hose's diameter has not really grown. So? Congestion is the result. The bits will travel in all sorts of directions to get to their final destination. Ever been stuck on a freeway and ended up taking strange exits beforehand to finally get to your date? That's the concept.
In the last year or so 2 compression codecs for Web Movies have been heavily competing: RealVideo (who got famous for their audio broadcasts via Net) and Quicktime as known to all our Mac friends for their mov. movies as opposed to the avi. files for Mr. Gates' ever present platform "Widows". Judging by the quantity of quicktime movies available on professional movie-oriented sites, it seems, that Quicktime "won" the race. We decided to make our videos available in Quicktime because chances are high, that your computer can play them without having to download additional software.
Both of these systems require your computer to have certain plug-ins or program extensions to run the movies. Click on one of our movies and see if they already play. Chances are (if you have a newer computer) that they will play immediately. If not, you will have to download Quicktime and install it on your system. The button at the bottom of the movie page will get you to the respective company and they will tell you exactly what to do.
Some years from now we will laugh a lot about the Web movies we are watching now because their compression codecs are far from ideal. Especially if you are a movie buff who likes their 30 frames per second and 32 bit color. However it is finally possible to watch moving pictures in one way or the other over the Net and that's nice. I am glad you can watch our videos and decide if you are interested in a product or not. We compressed the movies you are about to watch to an extent where picture quality is OK enough but emphasized on quick streaming or download so you can watch our flics as quickly as possible. If you would like to get the full viewing experience ask your local dealer to play the demo video for you or refer to our broadcast quality educational tapes. Now go and see for yourself!