This guide will show you how to take short video clips from discs and computer files and turn them into online streaming files.

Please do NOT panic at the length of this page.  This is actually a very simple procedure.  What'll happen is you'll go through the guide step-by-step the first time around, then you'll glance at it for reference the second time, but that should do it.  The actual process is very straightforward.

It's also to note that this guide is written to turn out high-quality full-screen clips, not that YouTube garbage, and that's why there are so many steps.  If all you want is a YouTube-type clip, there are lots of programs around that'll do it in one simple step.

There are basically three steps:

1.  Get the clip ready for Media Encoder 
2.  Use Media Encoder to convert it to WMV, the streaming format we'll be using 
3.  Setting up the link so it'll stream properly

By far, the only real task is #1.  The Media Encoder step is pretty simple, and setting up the streaming is just a matter of pasting in a template and changing the name and path to your file.

Requirements

• This is being written on WinXP and I have no idea if the included programs will even run on Vista, much less work correctly.  One can only pray.

 
• Got gobs of hard drive space?  If unsure, open 'My Computer', click on the drive with the right mouse button and open 'Properties'.  Look at the 'Free space'.  You'll need up to 8 gigs if you're planning on ripping DVD discs, and up to another 5 or 6 gigs for the uncompressed clip, assuming these are relatively short clips (upwards of a minute).  To be on the safe side, figure 15, minimum.

Note:  You could get by with only a few gigs, but it would take a lot more effort on your part.  For starters, you'd only be able to rip one VOB file at a time from the DVD, and you'd probably have to save your AVI file in a compressed format, like DivX, and that's a whole new learning curve all by itself. 
 

• You'll also need to see the file extensions (".txt", ".doc", etc), so, if you haven't already, open any Windows window, then Tools Menu, 'Folder Options', click on the 'View' tab and check the 'Show hidden files and folders' box.

  
• If you're going to be dealing with fairly long clips (a few minutes), the drive will need an NTFS file system, rather than FAT32.  The problem is that FAT32 file systems have a 4-gig limit, and you're going to hit that real quickly dealing with uncompressed AVI.

  
Open 'My Computer', click on the drive with the right mouse button and open 'Properties'.  By 'File System' it'll either say "FAT32" or "NTFS".  If it's the latter, you're good to go.  If it's a FAT32 system, do the following.  I promise it won't hurt anything: 
  
• Open Start Menu, Programs, 'Command Prompt'.

  
• Type "Convert <drive letter> /FS:NTFS"

  
That is, if you were converting your D Drive, it would be: 
C:\>Convert D: /FS:NTFS 
 
• Hit the Enter key and it'll convert the drive to NTFS.  An NTFS drive can take any size file.
 

Programs

Click here to download the free Microsoft program Media Encoder.

• TMPGEnc — To raise the volume of the audio track and add fade-in & fade-out
• VirtualDub — To crop the video and 'splice' the video and audio tracks together

If you're planning on snagging clips from DVDs, grab the above two and these three:

• DVDD — To copy the files from the DVD to the computer
• DVD2AVI — To convert the 'raw' DVD files into a workable state
• Gordian Knot — To determine the exact size of the video

 

All of the downloaded Zip files have "readme" files included which should be read.  A few of the programs have some important tweaks that must be made to their settings. 

If you want an excellent all-around movie player for the computer, I'd suggest Movie Player Classic.  Be sure to read the enclosed readme file and tweak the options.

If you already have the clip on the computer but want to crop it and/or alter the audio track, click here.

If you already have the clip and it's ready to hit Media Encoder, click here.

If you already have the WMV file and just want to hook it up, click here. 
 

File Sources

The first step is to get the clip on the computer in a standard format that Media Encoder recognizes.  Let's go over a few possible sources: 

• Internet — Downloaded files (or grabbed out of Temporary Internet Files) will probably be in FLV, WMV or MOV format.  Unless they're ready to dump straight into Media Encoder, we'll use a program to convert them to uncompressed AVI so we can do fade-ins, fade-outs, etc, maybe lower or raise the volume of the audio track, then dump them into Media Encoder for the render to WMV.  Conversion instructions are here.

  
Note, of course, that this is a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out", and nothing on this page is going to improve the quality of the clip.  If your original source looks crappy in full-screen mode, it'll look just as crappy when you get done here. 
 
• Camcorder — If you have some sort of software that came with the camcorder, save it as "uncompressed AVI" if given the option.  That's the 'pure' video format that we'll use throughout.  Otherwise, look for some kind of 'Best' setting in the software.  If it's simply a USB transfer, we'll hope it's in a format that either Media Encoder or one of the conversion tools can handle.

   
• VCR — For this, you need a video capture card.  It's a much more serious operation and I refer you to the 'Video Help' section of this site.

 
• DVD/R from TV — Depending upon the DVD/R unit, you may have to "close the session" or "finalize" the disc in the DVD/R before it can be read on the computer.  Try it first without.

 
• DVD — Apart from just grabbing our clip, we're not going to actually fuss with the DVD files.  If you want to get into the inner workings of a DVD, I refer you to the 'Video Help' section of the site.

Video Terms 

We're not going to get complicated, but there are a few terms you need to know: 

• Aspect Ratio — This is the width-to-height ratio.  If you'll notice, your computer screen is wider than it is tall.  It has a 4:3 aspect ratio.  That is, if the width was 400 pixels, the height would be 300.  A square would have an aspect ratio of 1:1.

If you watch a video clip and people look too fat or too tall, that means the aspect ratio is off.  For this guide, aspect ratio isn't something we usually have to worry about, but if suddenly your clip doesn't look right, back up a step or two and find out where things went wrong. 

We're going to deal with two aspect ratios, 4:3 and 16:9.  The 4:3 movies are "full-screen" and fill the monitor.  The 16:9 movies are called "letterbox" and are made to fit the wide screen at the movie theater.  The difference is very obvious, as one will fill the monitor's screen and the other will have big black bands above and below it.  If your clip is coming from a TV show, it'll be 4:3 full-screen.  If it's from a movie, chances are it'll be a 16:9 letterbox. 
 

• Bandwidth — This has two meanings.  To the web surfer, it means "per second", and if you don't have enough bandwidth, the video or song will stop briefly as it downloads more data.

But to us as webmasters, it means "per month", and it's a set figure for the accumulated number of bytes downloaded from our sites per month.  If 10 people watch a 10-meg movie, that's 100 megs of bandwidth used. 

In the not-too-distant past, web hosting companies didn't give us personal users very much bandwidth.  With the new wave of web hosting companies, this has all changed and worries about bandwidth are a thing of the past. 

If you're only planning on putting a few short clips on your site, then it's probably nothing you have to worry about, but if you're planning on putting a bunch of clips online, or some really long ones, then you'd better dig up your web host's home site and find out how much bandwidth you're allotted.  If it's somewhere between 3 and 10 gigs, like the 'old wave' companies offer, you'd better think seriously about switching hosts.  By way of contrast, BlueHost offers 300 gigs. 

If you decide to switch hosts and go with BlueHost, I'd appreciate it if you'd sign up using the link on this page, as, being a BlueHost member, I get a little kickback for the sign-up. 
 

• Bitrate — This is the 'quality' setting.  It's the number of bits of information used per second when making the WMV.  The more bits of info, the higher the quality.  About the lowest bitrate for a high-quality clip like we're making would be about 750.  Much lower than that and the quality is going to degrade sharply, especially with moving objects on the screen.  If you have plenty of server space and available bandwidth, then you'll use a bitrate of about 2,000 for your clips to maintain the high quality.

 
• Size — All of our clips will be 640-wide by whatever the height needs to be to maintain the aspect ratio.  The programs will give us the height number and we'll manually slap it into the Media Encoder box just before hitting the 'Start' button.

Here's a glossary of video terms for further info.

Taking A Clip From A DVD — Legalities

Since we're just dealing with clips, or "trailers", there's no copyright issue here.  "Fair Use" laws allow us to use clips of movies and songs and such, and it's nothing but good advertising.  It's the very opposite of pirating whole movies.  Seeing a cute clip from some flick might very well induce someone to buy or rent the movie. 

On the other hand, there's a big difference between a personal site and posting anything remotely copyrighted on something like YouTube.  You can try, but don't be surprised if it's yanked.  The online video sites are, understandably, seriously paranoid about being sued by the big movie and song companies, so "erring on the side of caution" is the rule of the day.  Put another way, they'd much rather piss you off than MGM or Sony.

 
Ripping

Slam the disc into the drive and let it start playing, then close it down.

Fire up DVDD: 

The files should appear highlighted on the right.  (I still use Windows' original highlight colors — so sue me)

To the right of 'Destination' is a small folder icon.  Click on it and select your destination folder.  Click on the big icon at the bottom to start.  For problems, check the Troubleshooting section at the bottom of this guide.  If it quits after a few seconds, the disc is copyright protected and that's it for the project.
 

Frameserving

Fire up DVD2AVI.  This is called 'frameserving', because it's organizing the 'raw' VOB files by 'keyframes' for future processing.

File Menu, 'Open":

You're looking for the set of VOBs that have the "_2", "_3", etc, files.  If in doubt, open the folder the ripped files are in, sort them by 'Details' mode and see which "VTS" set contains the big movie files. 

When you find the right one, select the "_1" file, not the "_0" file, then click 'Open'.  Click 'OK' in the little box that pops up, then you'll see the main program: 

There's one important setting you have to make first, then it should stay in place in the future.  Even though it's ghosted out, click on the Video Menu and select 'Field Operation', 'Forced FILM'. 

Also, don't pay any attention to the aspect ratio in the window.  It's usually off.

Grab the slider and d-r-a-g it to a spot before the clip you want.  It doesn't have to be exact, just make sure it's before.  Then click on the left marker button, circled above.  Either drag the slider or use the right arrow key to skip past the end of the clip you want.  Click on the right marker and you should see your selection highlighted. 

Hit the F5 key for a second, then the ESC key to stop.  A box will pop up over to the right.  At the top it'll say either "4:3" or "16:9". 

File Menu, 'Save Project'.  Put the above number in the file name, like "main34" or "main16"; something to remind you which aspect ratio the movie has in the next step. 

Look in the work folder and make sure it made both a D2V file and an audio track.  If the audio track is missing, go back to DVD2AVI, Audio Menu, 'Track Number' and select Track 2.  Start the process again and see if it makes the audio track.  If not, try Track 3, etc.  I ripped a movie just the other day and the audio was on Track 5, so it happens. 

As you skim through the movie with the slider, if you see some thin horizontal bars or blurring trailing behind people and objects moving across the screen like so:

Then you need to stop and skip down to the Troubleshooting section and learn how to deinterlace it before the next step.
 

Sizing

Fire up Gordian Knot: 

Click on the 'Resolution' tab.  Make sure "NTSC" is checked over to the left and "640" is in the 'Width' box.

Click on the 'Open' box and load the D2V file that DVD2AVI made, noting by the file name whether the clip's a 4:3 or 16:9.  A preview screen will pop open.  Push it to the side for the moment. 

In the upper-center area, choose either '16:9' or '4:3', depending upon what DVD2AVI said it was. 

Click the 'Auto Crop' button.  You'll notice some activity on the preview screen as it checks out the exact size of the clip.

On the preview window, click 'Save & Encode', then 'Save', 'Save'.
 

Audio Adjustments

Okay, now for the audio track.  If you have a clip and the audio needs adjusting, load it into VirtualDub and do a 'Save WAV'.  That splits the audio track off for processing.

Coming off a DVD, the volume is usually way lower than computer levels and needs to be raised.

Also, because we're snipping out scenes right in the middle of the flick, the audio is probably going to abruptly start and stop.  As such, we'll use a program to both raise the volume of the audio and add a fade-in and/or fade-out.

The program we're going to use is called TMPGEnc (Tsunami MPEG Encoder).  This is a 30-day trial version, but that only applies to the MPEG part of the program.  It's not crippled for just audio use.

Did you make the change to the Options in the readme file?  Option Menu, 'Environmental setting', 'Audio Engine' tab, check the "High quality" box down at the bottom, very important.

Click on the 'Browse' button for the 'Audio source' box and browse to the audio track that DVD2AVI spat out.

Click on the 'Setting' button, then the 'Audio' tab.  On that panel, click on the 'Setting' button:

Click on the 'Normalize' button, enter "100", then 'OK'.  This is called 'normalizing'.  TMPGEnc is determining how much to raise the volume to have it be 100% of normal 'computer volume'.

If you want a fade-in or fade-out, check the respective boxes and enter the number of milliseconds (1000 ms = 1 sec).  Normally, you'd want to fade out the clip, but there are certainly times you wouldn't, just for effect.

'OK' back to the main window.  Go to File Menu, 'Output to file', 'WAV file'.

At the bottom of the box it should say "PCM, 48,000 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo".  If it doesn't, select it from the 'Setting' box.

Enter a file name and let 'er go.

Give the resulting WAV file a quick listen, making sure your computer speakers are adjusted at their 'normal' level.  If it's too loud, go back to the Audio Settings in TMPGEnc and reduce the 'Normalize' figure to 80 and try again.
 

Cropping, Fading & Muxing

Okay, now it's time to crop the clip, add a video fade-in or fade-out if you want, and then splice the video and audio tracks together.  This is called "muxing" in the biz, short for 'multiplexing'.  If you take a video and split it into its video and audio tracks, that's "demuxing".

If you want to fade the video in or out, open up the AVS file Gordian Knot produced with Notepad and add these two lines to the very bottom:

fadein(xx)
fadeout(xx)

Where "xx" equals "number of frames".  So, at around 30 FPS (frames per second), a 3-second fade would be 3 x 30 = 90.  If you only want a fade-in or fade-out, remove the unused line.  Save the file.

If you just have a clip and want to do the fade-in and/or fade-out, open up Notepad and punch in this:

Adjust the "xx" as above.  Save the file and change the ".txt" file extension to ".avs".  That's the file you'll load into VirtualDub in the next step.

Open up VirtualDub: 

File Menu, 'Open video file', load the AVS file that Gordian Knot produced. 

Audio Menu, 'WAV Audio', load the WAV file that TMPGEnc produced. 

You can see in the above pic that there are four buttons we're going to be using, along with the right and left arrow keys on the keyboard. 

I'm going to explain this as best I can and hope you can follow along.  It's easier to do than to describe. 

Reading across, there's the 'Start' button and 'End' button, which scoot you out to the beginning or end of the clip, and the two buttons together are the 'Mark In' and 'Mark Out' buttons, which mark off where to make the cut.  Note that the frame you're looking at when you hit one of the Mark buttons is included in the marked-off section. 

First, drag the slider or use the arrow keys and get it exactly where you want the clip to begin.  Hit the left arrow key once to move it to the previous frame.  Click on the Mark Out button. 

Now click on the 'Start' button, to scoot back to the beginning, then the 'Mark In' button.  You should see the section you're going to cut out highlighted.  Hit the Delete key to cut the piece. 

Now scoot out to the very last frame you want displayed.  Use the right arrow key to scoot it out one more frame, then hit the 'Mark In' button.  Hit the 'End' button to scoot it out to the end, then the 'Mark Out' button.  Again, you should see the to-be-cut part highlighted.  Hit the Delete key and that takes care of the video. 

File Menu, 'Save as AVI'.  The hard drive will thrash around as it writes the big file. 

When it's finished, you can play the AVI for general review, but it might not play smoothly since it's trying to read the massive file in real-time.  Your main concerns are making sure the aspect ratio is correct and that the audio volume is about normal. 

That's it for step 1, getting the file ready for Media Encoder.  As you saw, none of it involved any real brainpower.  The only decision you had to make is in Gordian Knot, and as long as you included the aspect ratio in the file name that DVD2AVI made, even that's no big deal.

Now we're going to render this huge uncompressed file into a tiny WMV file. 

Open Media Encoder: 

• Select 'Convert a file'
• Browse to your source file
• Select 'Windows Media server (streaming)'
• From the top menu, select 'DVD quality'
• Click 'Next' twice and make sure the 'Begin converting...' box on the lower-left of the 'Settings Review' panel is unchecked.

Click 'Finish' and the main program will open:

Click on the 'Properties' button.  It may take a few seconds to open. 

In the Properties box, click on the 'Video Size' tab. 

Now swing around to the work folder, click on the source AVI file with the right mouse button and open 'Properties'.  Click on the 'Summary' tab, then the 'Advanced' button if nothing is showing.  What you're looking for is the height.  The width should be 640.  (If it isn't 640 wide, you made a boo-boo setting up Gordian Knot)

Swing back to Media Encoder and put the height figure in the little 'Height' box near the bottom.

If you're not using one of the new wave web hosting agencies and you're worried about your bandwidth, or it's a particularly long clip, or you mainly want the audio portion, there are two ways to downsize it:

• The first step is the bitrate, so click on the 'Compression' tab, then 'Edit', then the '2137 Kbps' tab.  In the 'Video bit rate' box, put in "768K".  The box is a little finicky so if you see a red warning thing appear below, try it again.

 
• If you want to cut it down even more, the next step is to chop down the overall size.  Click on the 'Video Size' tab, chop the 640 down to 320 (or whatever you feel best), then use the height/width formula down below in the 'Putting Media Player On The Page' section to figure out the new height.

Note:  To the right of the little 'Height' box is a dark gray panel.  Click on the little gadget next to the 'Height' box to raise or lower it a pixel, and you should see 'Invalid' appear over to the right.  So, start off with the size the formula spits out, but if it says 'Invalid', click it up or down a notch until the 'Invalid' goes away.

Click 'Apply' near the bottom, then 'Start Encoding' up at the top. 

Two notes: 

• This is doing a "two-pass" render, and nothing's visible during the first pass.  Also, the computer might feel a bit sluggish during the first pass due to heavy CPU usage.

 
• You can get a good bead on whether or not the audio is at an average volume level by the green bars over to the left.  They should be somewhere around the middle.  Below a third up is too low, and if it goes into the red at any point, it's too high.  You'll have to go back to the TMPGEnc step, readjust the audio level and work back to this point.

Play the WMV file and make sure it's perfect.  Get that rascal online and we're almost ready to rock.

---

Linking To Media Files 

When linking to streaming media, whether it's video or audio, the actual media file is controlled by a 'redirect' file that tells the media player that this is a streaming file, and to begin playing as soon as it has enough downloaded to kick things into gear.  Without the redirect file, Media Player would download the entire clip before it started to play. 

Open Notepad and punch in: 

The only thing you'll change is the path and name of the WMV file.

Save the file, then change the file extension from ".txt" to ".wvx".  That's the file you'll link to in your web editor.  The browser and player see that "mms:" instead of the usual "http:", and that signals everybody that a streaming file is on the way. 

It's important that this file remain 'pure' text, so only edit it with Notepad, not Wordpad or anything else. 
 

Putting Media Player On The Page 

If you want to put the player on your web page, punch this into the raw HTML file:

<EMBED type="application/x-mplayer2" pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/" Name="MediaPlayer" src="http://www.yoursite.com/coolclip.wmv" AutoStart=0 ShowStatusBar=0 volume=-1 HEIGHT=400 WIDTH=480> 

Note this doesn't use a redirect file, but it does use the whole path to the file starting with "http".  In the above code, you'd change the path & name to your WMV file and the width and height.  Use the width of the video and add 66 to the height to cover the control panel. 

To start playing automatically, change the "AutoStart" figure to "1".

If you want to make the video box a tad bigger, go ahead, but you'll have to keep the aspect ratio together.  For that, we use simple algebra: 

width1          width2
————   =   ————
height1             x 

In this example, we'll say the original is 320 x 240, but that's kinda small so we want it to be 400 wide.  That means we have to find the new height.  Grabbing the Calculator program and plugging in the numbers:

  320          400
———   =  ———
  240            x

We multiply crosswise the two numbers we have: 

240 x 400 = 96000 

and divide by the other number: 

96000 ÷ 320 = 300 high. 

We add 66 to the height to compensate for the control panel, so the measurement we plug into the code would be 400 x 366.
 

Whether you're linking to a WVX file or embedding the player, be sure to actually test the page on the site, not just locally.  If it doesn't play, there's help down below in the Troubleshooting section.

And that's it.  Kinda fun, eh?  And what really sets you apart is the following:

Most people, if they have a common full-screen 4:3 clip for their source file, dump it into Media Encoder and it turns out a fine 4:3 video, either 640 x 480 or 320 x 240.

However, when they try to do the same with any clip that's not a standard 4:3, the program automagically turns it into a 4:3 and the aspect ratio is off and it ends up looking amateurish.  But, since they don't know how to do the above, that's what we, the hapless viewers, end up watching on their site.

You, however, now hold the key, which is opening up Media Encoder's properties and changing the size of the height.  And, of course, there's the professional touch of cropping the video exactly and fading both the video and the audio in and out.

Those others are what we videophiles refer to as lamers or noobs.

You, however, are now in the club. 

Converting Formats 

This is assuming you've got a clip in some format other than AVI that you want to crop, adjust the audio, fade, etc, before feeding it to Media Encoder.  If all you want to do is convert it to WMV, Media Encoder will handle almost any common file format except FLV.

To convert an FLV to AVI, use this small tool.  Note that's it not uncommon for the audio/video to be out of sync after converting from FLV.  If this happens, skip down to the next section.

If the file is an MPEG, it should load into VirtualDub just fine and 'Save as AVI'.

For other formats, try the free RADTools to convert your clips to AVI.  Load the file, click 'Convert a file', make sure the output file format is AVI, then click 'Convert'.  In the small box that pops open, select 'Full Frames (uncompressed)".
 

Adjusting The Audio/Video Sync 

If the audio and video tracks are out of sync in your source file, pop the file into VDub, go to Audio Menu, 'Interleaving', try "-100" in the 'Delay audio track by' box.  Do a 'Save as AVI' and check out the clip.  If it's little better, try "-200".  If it seems to be getting worse, remove the minus sign and go the other direction.  Close-ups of people's lips are the best indicator.  Eventually you'll nail it.

Note:  If it's a long clip, you don't have to save the whole thing.  Just abort the process and then check out the test clip.
 

Combining Multiple Clips In VDub 

To combine multiple clips in VDub usually involves a 'frame rate' mismatch unless they're from the same movie.  They all have to be exactly the same in order for a merge to take place.  To get them the same, load a clip, go to Video Menu, 'Frame Rate', check the 'Change to' gadget and enter "29.97" in the box.  Do a 'Save as AVI', then load the next clip and repeat the process.  Even if it says it already has a frame rate of 29.97, do the process anyway as it might actually be 29.97000023 and the clip won't merge.  Then load the first clip, then File Menu, 'Append AVI segment' for the additional clips.  It'll tack them on to the end of the clip.

DVDD:

If it rips for a few seconds and then quits, the disc is copy-protected and that's that.

 

If it gets part way through and then quits with an error message, clean the hell out of the bottom of the disc.  Start off by cleaning it with shaving cream or dish soap, and if it still won't rip, get tough.  Look at the bottom under a bright light.  Grab a piece of tissue, spit on it, and rub the hell out of anything that looks like trouble.  If you have a second DVD drive, definitely try it.

 

DVD2AVI:

If the audio sounds funny, go to Audio Menu, 'Dolby Digital', turn on the 'Dolby Surround Downmix', or turn it off if it's on.

If you see some thin horizontal lines or blurring trailing behind objects moving across the screen, it's called "interlacing" and it needs to be "deinterlaced".  There are ways to test which kind of interlacing it is and what needs to be done, but it's complicated.  It'll be easier to just make a few hit-and-miss tests.  If your clip's really long, you'd probably save time using DVD2AVI to snip out a tiny clip of the offending scene and work with that until you figure out which parameter to use.

• Load the D2V file into GKnot, use the Autocrop, then 'Save & Encode' on the preview window to pop open the AVS box.  In the 'Field Operations' area, check the 'Field Deinterlace (no blend)' gadget, then save the AVS file.  Leave GKnot open.  Load the AVS file into VDub, grab the slider and see if the blurring is still there.

 
If it is, go back to GKnot and try the other 'Field Operations'. 
 
• If it's still there, load the VOBs into DVD2AVI again, then go to Video Menu, 'Field Operation', and turn off the 'Forced FILM' by selecting 'None'.  Clip out one of the offending scenes and then do the above routine on it.

  
• If it's still there, then you've exceeded the scope of this guide and I refer you to the 'Video Help' section of this site.  Be forewarned, though — to get rid of some really problematic interlacing means the clip will have to be rendered to MPEG, and that's a whole multi-step procedure all its own.

 

PLAYBACK:

• If the link on the page isn't correct, you'll get a 'page not found' message.  Check the link.

 
• If the link's good but nothing's happening, try putting the entire path to the WVX file in the web page.  That is, instead of just linking to "coolvid.wvx", link to "http://www.yourdomain.com/coolvid.wvx".

 
• If the player is embedded on the page and nothing's happening when you click on the 'Play' button, first double-check the entire path to the file, then try a WVX redirect file.  If you're still having problems, you might put a test file on the root of the site just so you don't have to worry about paths until you get it working, then fill in the path to the real file once you at least know things are working in general.

• If a link finds the WVX file, but the WVX file can't find the WMV file, Media Player should open, then pop up with an error message.  That means the path to the WMV file is wrong.  Did you forget the ".com", or use backward slashes rather than forward slashes?

 
• If it still doesn't work, try replacing the "mms:" in the WVX file with "http:".  It might be that your hosting service doesn't support the MMS protocol.  Whether or not it streams (as referred to downloading the whole file first) depends on the software your web host is using.  If it doesn't, you're out of luck and will have to switch web hosting companies if you want streaming media on your site.

 

Last Thoughts

Video is like plumbing.  90% of it is real easy, but when it gets complicated, it gets real complicated.  If you have some errant clip that just won't load or convert or frameserve or whatever, toss it in the trash bin and move on.  If it's seriously important, then you're welcome to dive into the 'Video Help' portion of the site and have at it.  Just be prepared for something of a learning curve, as the file will most likely have to be rendered to get rid of the problem before handing it to Media Encoder.  Media Encoder's a great program, but it's just an encoder.  You can't 'work' the file like you can with the tools we use in the Video section.

Also, if you have a comments area and/or email link on your site, be prepared for a few complaints from people who don't really have the broadband bandwidth they thought they had.  They'll say, "But I watch video clips all the time without any problem!", because they're watching extremely low-bitrate YouTube clips.  The 2,137 bitrate we used on this page should stream just fine with any normal, standard broadband hookup.

If they're using some cheap broadband service, like Verizon's cheapest package, they may or may not have problems, depending upon the length of the clip.  That is, their cheapest package is only .768 megs, but, on a shorter clip, enough may download while it's playing to finish the clip uninterrupted, whereas it'll catch up with a longer clip at some point and stop while it downloads more info.

If you get stuck, and you can't find the answer in the 'Video Help' section, there are tons of video forums around. 

You might notice that most of the better video clips on my site open and close with a snazzy transition.  I used ULead's VideoStudio for the site's clips, and, at only $69, it's a pretty hot program.  Unless you'd rather cough up $799 for Adobe Premiere, of course, which doesn't have near the selection of cool transitions VideoStudio does. 

And, again, welcome to the club.  What you've done up above is really remarkable, compared to how much garbage is on the web.  If you want an example of how you're even a cut above a professional organization like CNN, go to this site and click on any video.  Get past the commercial and watch how they've taken a broadcast that was originally aired in standard 4:3 full-screen TV format and stretched it into a letterbox format, making everybody look wider and fatter.  Some big-wig in Management probably thought that the letterbox look was 'modern', never stopping to think, for one teensy little moment, that there was a bit more to it than that.