Including media into your web pages can help captivate and impress your audience.

Each piece of media you add increases the time it takes for your page to download and appear to your visitor. Choosing when and where to add media is important.

Displaying the media

Often, our Content Management clients can add their media easily and quickly from their secure control panel. This creates the pure code necessary to carry out the process.

Movies should always be presented to your visitor at their request by the clicking of a link or navigation to a movie page.

File size is one element that needs consideration. For a dial up (56K) visitor, 2MB takes 9 minutes to download, whilst a standard broad band visitor (512k) will see the file in 23 seconds. 2MB will provide a short 20 – 40 second clip.

Shockwave Flash Movies and other programs, used for animation, need a plug-in to play on a computer. These are often supplied, out of the box. e.g Flash, Windows Media.

Streaming long movies

Whilst a small movie can give a short visual effect, a longer film is needed to accommodate more than a minute’s footage. Such media is perfect for instruction movies, tours of your premises and marketing messages.

How big can MP3, MP4 Movies, eBooks be in file size?, answered here

Our developers and technical staff are on hand to supply and configure space on a special server to accommodate such media. Visitors to your site, especially broadband ones, are then able to view your movie whilst it is being downloaded, this “streaming” ensures the best experience for your audience without much expense to you.

Benefits of a streaming server
  • Visitors with slower connections are more fully accommodated
  • Video and audio quality is maintained
  • Content copyright is protected as no download takes place
  • Corporate firewalls accept viewing as no download takes place
  • Other advanced features can be implemented ……… Full comparison here

Many clients are now happy to simply host their website videos on YouTube and stream their movies from there. As it has become acceptable for even highly regarded household brands, not to have their own facilities.