I need some info about DRM, video resolution, and formats.
 

So Delany Decolleur is going live within the next two weeks but I have some questions about video content.

I'm just going to list these as I don't really feel like making a paragraph for each one, so:

1. What is considered the HD, HIGH, and LOW resolution?
2. What about BANDWIDTH for each of the above?
3. What codecs/formats are most popular?
4. What works the best for Apple users or do you just not worry about them?
5. Any comments about the new H.264 codec?
6. What are your feelings (as webmasters) with regard to DRM?
7. Is there anything other than MS for DRM?
8. Is it possible to host your own DRM server rather than paying someone else?
9. What is better and why, Secure Streaming or DRM?

This is all I can think of for now so TIA.

David.

First off the resolution will depend on the native resolution of the camera you shot it in. If you are shooting in HD its not going to be standard like it used to be.

1. 2000, 1000, 500
2. See above
3. WMV and Flash
4. Flash
5. Users hate DRM
6. Yes, but expect to pay and arm and a leg
7. Yes, we sell it www.objectcube.com
8. Every thing can be broken, the question is how hard

Jay

I concur with everything Jay said here, except Mac users do love their Quicktime.

Thanks for the input.

I was a little confusing with the first two questions. What I meant was:

# 1. What bit-rates? My client and I've pretty much settled on the 1000 for the low and 2000 for the high as she likes the clarity but this is dependant on...
# 2. What resolution? This is where I need advice. The video cam is a 3CCD Panasonic PV-DV953 but all I know is that the resolution reported in Premiere is 720x480, I can't find anything about the frame-rate (30i, 24p, etc)

The resolution is where I can't make up my mind with regard to 720x480, 640x480, or 320x240. And why is it that the native resolution is 720x480 but 320x240 is half of 640x480? What is happening to the 80pixels when you drop from 720x480 to 640x480? It looks to me like the image is being squashed and the objects (people) in the video are being distorted, I don't think it is cropping. So shouldn't it be 720x480 and 360x240 to maintain the aspect ratio?

And is it worth it to offer video at 720 with the higher bandwidth it uses, does it make much of a difference to a suffer?

Thanx, David.

I originally went with 1000 - and spent half my time dealing with people whose connections weren't fast enough to stream it :-(
I ended up redoing everything at 600 - very few complaints about the quality - and almost everyone can stream it - i like not getting complaints :-)

on a side note i herd the blue ray DRM AACS has been cracked
but this may be old news

contact Leon at Mediakey.com for all the help you will need getting the Right DRM setup!

1. We use widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio) for all our videos. 1280x720 at 3700kbit/s for the HD, MED: 720x405 1700kbit/s LOW: 432x324 at 500kbit/s
2. see above
3. wmv
4. wmv plays fine in the WMV player for OSX, or the Filp4Mac plugin for Quicktime plays wmv files, and VLC also plays wmv files now.
5. h.264 is really nice, but the wmv seems to be a slightly better. Also, the h.264 is more computationally tasking relative to a wmv file at the same bitrate.
6,7,8 Users hate DRM. It's not worth it.
9. Depends on the file size you're using

-K.