Streaming Mpeg2 over the internet

[Rick Step]

I've got a question:

I've got an mpeg encoding of my video and a wav file for audio on a short trailer i put together...how do I stream this for the web? Is it possible?

Also, for future projects, whats the best way to encode for web streaming...thanks,

Rick

[Rob Lohman]

Streaming as in it downloads while you already watch, no, that's
not possible with MPEG(2). Ofcourse you can offer an MPEG2 file
for people to download, however this is usually not what you
want. These days there are far better compression algorithms
available for internet delivery (like MPEG4=DivX=XviD, Sorenson
or Windows Media).

Internet compression is a trial and error process and takes a while
to master (both in terms of tools and optimum settings). However
these are some guidelines:

- most people halve the resolution to reduce filesize and thus bandwidth
- most people export at 1.0 pixel aspect ratio instead of 0.9 (NTSC) or 1.067 (PAL)
- some people lower the framerate from 30 to 15 fps for example (to lower filesize/bandwidth again)
- if you have black bars I would crop those out so you only retain the actual picture (this either helps you to get a longer movie in the same filesize or lower the filesize/bandwidth even futher)
- choose a easy web format

There are basically three formats that are being used:

- QuickTime (.mov)
- AVI
- Windows Media (.wmv)

All of these *can* stream. There are more formats you can use
like Real, Flash or even MPEG1 (non streaming). But those are
definitely not in use as much.

The three formats above are container formats. This means that
the content inside those files can be compressed in various forms.
The system that encodes or decodes such a stream is called a
CODEC (COder/DECoder) and I've mentioned some of them
above.

For QuickTime you'll want to use a Sorenson or MPEG4 codec, for
AVI usually DiVX or XviD (which are forms of MPEG4). Windows Media
comes with codecs with the same name which are good as well.

Please do a search around this (DVD/web) forum and look around,
there are plenty of discussions on internet encoding around.

p.s. I've moved your thread to our web/DVD forum