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History | Clip Delivery Overview
If you wish to stream media in other industry standard formats such as MPEG, several of the client player software programs (Windows Media, QuickTime, RealPlayer) support them to some degree. Our best advice for compatibility purposes is that if you have the means to do so, convert the MPEG media file into one of these formats first, and then target your audience through that player. Otherwise, you may run into issues such as trying to figure out what player software your audience has, and how to encode the file for the best experience.
For Flash Video Streaming, for the average person just getting into streaming media, there is a rather steep learning curve to convert to Flash Video from another format and then get a that file to stream from the excellent but proprietary Flash Media Server. The reason this is so, is because the Flash Professional Authoring tool must be brought into play here, and not everyone has the skills or the resources necessary to get the end user a good usable experience. Another downside is that a user must be using a web browser in order to see the video as the flash player is always a browser plugin with a few exceptions. There are workarounds for this, but it takes skill to get the right settings. Flash also can support progressive download, but some skills with the Flash Authoring software must be incorporated in order to get a video file to play. However, if the skills and resources do exist, video for Flash has the greatest potential to solve any compatibility issues with audiences not all having the correct environment in order to view video from the web.
Most Non-Linear-Editors (NLEs) like Ulead, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premeire, etc. have the ability to output to these specific formats from these more general industry standard video clips. But if you don't have the cash to spend on these programs (because they can get pricey), consider a simple encoding program:
If you are a QuickTime person and wish to convert a file from one of these other formats to QuickTime, you must purchase QuickTime Pro from Apple. The price is usually about 30 dollars. You will find a link to download QuickTime and a link to buy a key to upgrade to QuickTime Pro at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ . A pro license is available for both Macintosh and Windows. But the downside for this is that you would have purchase a separate license for each platform.
To convert one of these file types to Windows Media format, Microsoft provides their encoding software for free, (but only on the Windows platform). It can encode media on the fly, or from static files. A number of options are available, and the software is fairly easy to learn. To obtain it, you can download it from this link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx
For the RealMedia format, RealNetworks provides a basic version of their encoding software for free (only on Windows), and a professional version for more money. It can also encode media on the fly, or from static files. You can download their software from the following URL: http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/basic.html
For specialized settings, finer detail control, and batch video encoding capapbilities, consider Sorenson Squeeze as an alternative. It is priced fairly well for educational use.
In addition, many third-party conversion tools exist if you feel like digging through Google or other Internet search engines. But the tools listed above should be considered trustworthy.
Clip Delivery for Windows Media | Clip Delivery for QuickTime | Clip Delivery for RealMedia