Web design Oxford - Web development Oxford

Videos on your website

Recently we have been approached to look at several projects involving video display.

It would be a mistake to be indifferent to using video as it is taking a more and more important place on the web. Not just because of the popularity, perhaps started by YouTube, but because of the versatility that a small video provides in transmitting messages to your audience.

If an image says more that 1000 words, well a video says more than 1000 images; it is a truly rich media. Each media has its uses, and people have found versatile ways of using phones, emails and chat, but video on the web is only now beginning to be utilised properly, and we recommend it as a fantastic way to communicate your message.

The practicalities

There are some things to consider if you want to have a video on your website. The most commonly available technology for viewing videos on the web is Flash, which is installed in most people’s browsers, so we think all videos should be converted to this format to enable the largest amount of viewers possible. You have to be careful though, the video size is crucial. If your video is too large it could mean people will have an intermittent and off-putting experience watching it, so it is a good idea to seek professional advice about video making – we can recommend newparkfilms.co.uk , one of our clients, we know that their video products are of the required quality.

A second method you could consider is video streaming, but we think this is now becoming an outdated way. Something called fake-streaming is taking over (most of the modern video players do fake-streaming). To explain, in the past when playing a video on the web, the entire video file had to be downloaded before it would start playing … that meant waiting! Video streaming sorted out this problem because the video player simultaneously played the video as the data got downloaded. However, that required a specialist video streaming host, which adds expense and complication. Fake streaming goes back to the original method of downloading, but the player converts the video as it arrives. So, it creates a fake stream of video data. So now, you don’t have to wait or use a specialist hosting service.