tech speak
3 ways to save on your bandwidth bill
Videos use the most bandwidth of any type of Web content. Video files tend to be quite large - one to five megabytes per minute of video - and with larger file sizes means higher bandwidth utilization by your Web site.
Since you must ultimately pay for the bandwidth used by your site (either in hard cash if you go over your bandwidth limit, or in lower response times if your site gets bogged down) it's only natural to want to reduce the impact videos have on your bandwidth.
Make your video files smaller
Unless you're producing very short movies, each of your Flash videos will likely be a couple of megabytes in size. If you have lots of visitors to your Web site, even a single 5 or 10 megabyte video will quickly eat up your monthly bandwidth allowance.
Suppose, for example, you get 200 visitors per day. If your home page has one video that's 10 megabytes, that's two gigabytes per day, or a bandwidth consumption of 60 gigabytes per month. And that doesn't include bandwidth spent on pages, graphics, and other content.
Try different conversion settings to create the smallest video at the highest quality. Try a slightly smaller bit rate or quality setting - but don't go overboard! Run some tests using a short video clip (one minute should do it). Try the lowest settings you can, while maintaining the quality you want.
Another method is to select smaller dimensions for your videos. Instead of publishing your video at 640 by 480 pixels, reduce its size to (say) 400 by 300.
Be sure to resize your player to match your videos. For best results, the dimensions of your Flash video player should be the same as the height and width dimensions of your converted movies. That is, if your video is 400 by 300 pixels, your player should have the same dimensions.
Use an enhanced converter program
Did you know Flash videos come in several different formats? And they vary in quality.
The oldest format, called Sorenson Spark, offers reasonable looking videos but you have to increase the bit rate or quality settings to get a really good picture.
Another format, called VP6, is supported by Flash Player 8 and later. By encoding your Flash videos into VP6 you can make your video files smaller in byte size, without sacrificing quality. We take a quick look at several of top commercial video converters here; all but Apple Quicktime can make VP6 videos.
Don't preload videos into your player
Finally, one of the best ways to save server bandwidth is to customize your Flash video player so that it doesn't automatically start playback when your visitor first arrives. The process entails two settings in your Flash video player:
- Disable autoplay. This keeps the player in Pause mode until the user specifically chooses to play it. For example, with the Playola World of Color player, you specify false for the autoplay option.
- Disable preload. The video is downloaded from your server if, and when, the user click the Play button. In Playola World of Color, you specify false for the preload option
You save bandwidth because not all visitors to your Web site will want to watch your video. Or perhaps they already watched it during a previous visit. Your server doesn't need to keep reloading and replaying your videos each time the Web page is displayed.
Because the video file is not downloaded, the player will display a black box instead of the first frame from your movie. You can put a still picture there by telling the player you wish to use a poster (or "splash") image.
In the Playola World of Color player, you can specify the still image using the posterFrame option. When your visitor first comes to your site, your Web page will load, and so will the player. They'll see the still image you've specified.
When the visitor clicks the Play button, the still image fades out, and the video loads and starts to play.
