Frequently Asked Questions - Video/Streaming Video
Video
What's the purpose of creating a video?
1. Provide a company overview, who you are and what you do.
2. Introduce or explain the benefits of new product or service to existing customers and new prospects
3. Differentiate yourself or a business from its competitors
4. Engage various stakeholders, including prospective investors, employees and customers
5. Teach employees a new skill
6. Give “viral” exposure on the Web, vastly increasing your audience
Basic questions to discuss for a video production project?
1. What is the purpose of the video?
2. Who is the target audience?
3. How long do you want the video to be?
4. What do you want the audience to do after watching the video?
5. How will you use the video upon completion?
6. Do you need a professional on-camera talent or voice-over?
7. Who will write the script?
8. How many shoot locations are there?
9. Are there any other materials that need to be included in the video, such as photographs, charts, graphs?
10. What do you like and dislike about other videos?
What are common types of video produced?
1. Company Overview
2. Sales Introduction
3. Testimonials
4. Fund Raising
5. Training
6. Trade Shows
7. Product Demonstration
8. Product or Service Promotion
9. Product or Service Information
In general, web viewers have short attention spans – it’s best to keep your promotional video under five minutes. Make it compelling and engaging with effective storytelling techniques.
Streaming Video
Online video usage continues to grow at an explosive rate. July 09 figures from ComScore indicate that in the U.S. alone, 21.4 billion videos were watched - up 88 percent from a year ago. That usage was spread across 81 percent of the Internet population watching a remarkable 135 videos per user.Noted SEO expert Bruce Clay has been quoted as saying that without video, your website will likely not rank in the future. Forrester analyst Nate Elliott wrote about "The easiest way to a first-page ranking on Google,” highlighting the fact that videos are 50 times more likely to show on the first page of search results.
What options are available for posting video to my website?
1. Host on your local server
2. Outsource hosting through a streaming server
Video can be posted on a website in a number of different formats and players. Flash, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Silverlight, Real Player (Flash is currently the leader in cross-browser compatibility)
Why use a hosted streaming server. vs my own local web server?
Streaming servers are typically located in many locations throughout the world. The video content is located on these edge servers, which accesses the file from the closest location to the viewer. Mostly, with only one network hop away from this streaming content. This improves the quality of the streaming experience to your users.
Videos hosted on a company’s own web servers might take anywhere from 20 to 24 hops (Internet network routers) before viewers can see your videos causing slow loading times and or stutters in viewing due to slow transfer speeds. Passing through several networks can decrease the overall quality of the streaming experience for viewers. It might also require you to prepare your content at lower bit rates/data rates. Major considerations are user volume, video size and video format. If you have many hits to the video at the same time, there could be difficulty with the both accessing the file and transferring the data, which could cause buffering issues. (Data can't be transferred to your computer fast enough for online videos to play smoothly) Sometimes, even with a streaming server and a high-speed connection buffering can be an issue, if there are high amounts of interoffice network traffic.
Sharing digital video files stored on a local area network and supporting those services over network file servers can create challenges, given the requirements of viewing video (large volumes of data, continuous-stream nature of the traffic, and high aggregate bandwidth.
Why use Quickstream.tv vs. free sites such as YouTube?
YouTube was a great place for brands to start their forays into online video and is still a good idea to maintaining presence for SEO. However, some organizations are finding there are several downsides to using YouTube embedded players on their websites for their business.
1. Business-to-Business demographics: Most web administrators have firewalls set for many video sites such as YouTube. The player does not appear on the webpage and the viewer may not even realize there is suppose to be a video in the space.
2. Control over the brand and user experience: Customization of the player (size, color, branding, channel listings, etc.)
They don't want the user pulled away from their experience -- where they might be exposed to videos from the competition or get pulled over to YouTube.com.
What's the difference between on-demand and live streaming?
On-Demand
1. Digital videotape, analog videotape, or digital files on your computer are converted to compressed files for broadcasting on the net. This is done on your computer and known as encoding.
2. These encoded streaming video files are then uploaded from a computer via FTP to a streaming server.
Live Streaming: (CDC does not currently offer live-streaming services.)
1. An event is captured live with a video camera at it's location
2. The video camera is connected to a computer via a firewire (IEEE) or USB cable. This cable feeds the video signal directly in to computer.
3. The video signal is converted to streaming media files (encoded) on the computer.
4. The encoded feed is then uploaded from the on-site computer to one of our dedicated streaming servers via cable, DSL, or a high-speed Internet connection.
5. Streaming servers then duplicate the feed and send it to all users requesting it in real time video streaming!
What should I know about video encoding?
Video encoding is one of those important steps in a video that will determine whether the output looks good or bad. Digital video can exist as any number of formats, using any number of settings. Digital video files can be very large files and must be converted/compressed to the proper size and format, using video encoding software. Converting video is not simply a matter of pressing the "start" button in an encoder. There are a number of settings that must be considered.
Video Format
File types, like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, QuickTime, Real Media, Windows Media, etc.
M4V is a standard file format for videos for iPods and PlayStation Portables developed by Apple. It is based on the MPEG-AVC video codec.
Can my videos be restricted from public viewing or password protected?
Yes, embedding the video on a secure html page that requires a user name and password for entry. There are also players that offer restrictions for geographic areas and sharing features.