The RealPlayer movie clips are a real pain. Even a short clip takes forever to load and to play it again another long wait is required. Or am I doing something wrong? This doesn't happen with Quicktime clips. Please get the Quicktime clips for the International Cha Cha ASAP. The RealPlayer clips are a waste of time.

I don't have the same experience as "dancer" but I do agree that the website has become busier. One can actually watch real video clips over and over as long as you press the rewind button before it finishes.

I am surprised that a website this popular don't have advertisers. Advertising might help diffuse some of the cost in maintaining the website but you have to entice or present your case to the business companies before they invest. There is nothing to lose in walking into a company with your portfolio and selling your website. It happens everyday in the business world. In my own little way, I would like to help but I am not so sure about the online security in ordering your ballroom swing CD. Do you have an address where I can send a money order? I prefer it this way for now.

Hello! I see there's been plenty of discussion on this topic, but I have one question. Have you changed the quicktime format on the weekly variation from download first to streaming video? When I clicked on the movie link today, I was told I don't have the correct viewer. The only way I could see the video of the step was through real player.
Otherwise, your site is fabulous!
thanks

For the life of me, I cannot see any value in a dance video that cannot be paused and stepped through. I think it would be a big mistake to go that route. I would not mind paying for a useful video clip, but I will not waste my time with the RealVideo which I consider "junk". I vote for useful video clips to members only if that's what it takes.

After your movie file is "downloaded" and can be played, you can go to window explorer and see that your movie file is actually in the folder probably labeled 'window/temporary internet files/content.IE5' if you are using Microsoft browser. Netscape has similar temporary file folders. Find the file (tip: sort the folder by time) and move it to your own collection folder and it can be played over and over again.

Hope this works for you too.

Dave

I love the new International Fox Trot variation. But at the same time, I really miss the old video formats that we could "download" and view them over and over again - even when download takes long time, it was worthwhile.

More on this subject. I agree with Rice that advertising might be a good solution. Don't get hung up with the thought that advertisers necessarily have to be dance related. Dancers also buy the same things that non-dancers do. Your site must record a large number of hits each day; use this as a selling point to potential advertisers.

As for membership, I, and others like me would certainly join if there were benefits for doing so. As it is, I see no information on your site about membership.

Jonathan,

I hope you read this. It seems like a one sided conversation here.

I have been doing more comparisons of Quicktime vs RealVideo. It takes a couple of minutes or more to buffer even the shortest realvideo stream. That may seem like a short time to you, but I do not have the patience to sit and wait that long. If I try to grab a quick cup of coffee or hit the bathroom during this time, I invariably arrive back too late and have to start the process all over again. Unless I sit and stare at the stupid screen during the buffering process, I will miss all or part of the display. Repeated downloads would be required to make any sense of any variation. Real video may seem like an advantage on your end, but on the users end it is just plain awful for dance variations. I urge you not to abandon Quicktime video.

In addition to the RealVideo, there's also a Quicktime clip. It's listed directly below.

Have fun!

Jonathan

Dancer,

RealVideo isn't quite as bad as you might think. First of all, the files are smaller than any other file type, including AVI or Quicktime. So downloading a RealVideo clip should take much less time than downloading a Quicktime clip, even if you have a slow modem.

Secondly, I did some research, and found out that if you want to avoid having to constantly re-buffer, all you have to do is save the clip to your hard drive. When played from a local drive, RealVideo is nearly as versatile as Quicktime or AVI.

Admittedly, one drawback is that in order to save RealVideo to your drive, you need to have the RealPlayer "Plus", which costs $30. But from my perspective, this has some very attractive advantages, such as:

(1) It enables us to use streaming media, saving bandwidth.

(2) People such as yourself who really want to use the good old-fashioned download-first technology still have the option to do so.

(3) The $30 serves as a minor deterrent... only the resourceful or determined people will bother pursuing download-first. The rest will settle for streaming media. This will save oodles of bandwidth, while still pleasing the more serious users.

(4) By saving bandwidth, we cut down on the traffic problem, so that fewer people will have accessibility problems. What good is having a Quicktime clip if you can't access it to download it? If you think it's frustrating waiting for a re-buffer, try getting kicked off halfway through the download of an AVI clip over and over. Or how about just not being able to get into the website at all? This is happening to people more and more. I get email like this on a daily basis now.

(5) I also get emails from frustrated Quicktime and Microsoft Media users saying "I can't view this video! I'm getting some sort of error message about a 'codec'!". This never happens with RealVideo.

This doesn't mean I've made any decisions yet about which video format to go with. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. But now that I know it's possible to save RealVideo to hard disk, it does make it considerably more attractive.

The other solution I was recently considering was sticking to AVI or Quicktime but cutting down the number of free clips to say, 5 or 6 steps per dance. This would help free up some space so that we can add Int'l dances. But it may not solve the bandwidth problem.

For the time being, I have opened up an account with another web hosting company, and have started to move some of the clips over there. That way when traffic gets heavy, the video clip users only slow down each other, and don't interrupt the rest of the website users. But this may be only a temporary fix, because it's pretty expensive for me, and this new server may not have any more luck with the clips than the current server.

Don't worry... no final decisions have been made yet. I have to do a lot more testing. I want to see how things go with the video clisp on this new server. I also want to take a poll on the RealVideo, which I will do in the next newsletter. The buck is going to do a lot more rolling before it comes to a stop. But in the end, I will choose options that are in the best interest of everybody overall.

Sincerely,
Jonathan