From the Office of Technical Management...
The MPEG (
Moving Picture Experts Group)
Video display format has been largely accepted on the net. MPEG movies
have arguably the best available compression ratios available, as well
as excellent cross platform support. Decompression of MPEG files used
to be dependant on separate pieces of hardware. However, with the
speed of today's processors, software decompression is quickly
becoming a standard.
Advantages
Disadvantages
AVI (Audio Video Interleave) Video format was a production of
Microsoft's for Intel. Currently Microsoft holds the rights to the
format. Specifically designed for optimization on the Intel processor
chips, the AVI format is most typically a Windows/PC based solution.
Advantages
Disadvantages
QuickTime Video is a format
from Apple. Originally only supported for the Macintosh family of
computers, this format is quickly becoming a standard on the
Web. Netscape ships with the QuickTime Plugin automatically installed
for both the PC and Mac formats. (Unix fans can try the xanim plugin.)
Apple's recent agreements with Sun (Press
Release) also implies native Unix support quite soon.
Advantages
Disadvantages
We recommend that you use QuickTime format for video.
Software support for producing QuickTime files is easily available on
the RPI Campus. Although MPEG compression is best, QuickTime is
pretty good.
Another aspect of this decision comes from the Java arena. The Java
Media Framework (JMF) provides somewhat uneven support for video,
because is is usually built upon the native capability of the
machine. There is also an all-Java cross-platform version of the JMF,
but it is even more restrictive. All versions of the JMF do support
the QuickTime format, but they do not support all of its codecs
(compression schemes). The Cinepak codec seems to be usable
everywhere, though, so please try to use that whenever possible.
Also, if you make an AVI file instead of a QuickTime file, use the
Cinepak codec there, too. See the
JMF site for details on supported formats.
We do not foresee a huge demand for video in Project Links modules.
Video files are typically quite large and take a relatively long time
to download. This is particularly a problem if many students are
accessing the same movie at the same time (e.g. in a classroom
setting). If you do use video, try to keep the size down by trimming
off unnecessary frames from the beginning and the end. You can also
usually get away with reducing the image quality and still have the
video be legible. With the development of in-house Java based video
analysis tools we may see an increase in demand for video, but again
the QuickTime format (Cinepak codec) is well suited for the task.
Video Format Analysis for Project Links
Purpose
Use video display to simply play a video in your module.
Investigation
MPEG
AVI
QuickTime
Recommendation
06/17/97