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

Jonathan:

Your decision on the future format is VERY important to us. Your vedio clip offering put you on the top of all dance related sites. It helps me learning greatly!

Dave

One quick bit about the RealPlayer: The freely downloadable Linux version of RealPlayer 7.0 can also play files saved to the hard drive. I haven't had a chance to test this on a Windows system yet, though...

--Eric

Please keep the quicktime files on your site! As many of the above remarks, I'm not in favour of the 'Realplayer thing' that would cost me money in order to be able to save clips on disk, and still takes a lot of time to buffer. I'd rather spent that money on some kind of 'subscription' to your site. I'm sure that many readers agree that Ballroomdancers.com is more than just another page on the www, it's a real advertisemant for the dancesport and a great resource for every dancer!
syfixo@otenet.gr

We're actually going to be switching all of our videos to Microsoft Media in the near future. The bad news is, this means that they will be similar to RealVideo... because of the streaming format, you will not have the ability to pause or step-through as with Quicktime, which uses download-first technology.

Unfortunately, the website has grown in popularity to the point that people are clogging up our server while downloading video clips. It's gotten so bad that I can no longer access the website to publish changes, unless I wait until after midnight. Many people are reporting slow response or even NO response from the server; others are reporting broken links and errors. This is all due to the high bandwidth demand of the download-first video clips.

Changing our format to streaming media is one solution. The other is removing some video clips from our site. As the site continues to grow, we would need to keep removing more and more clips. This is not the way we want to go.

The ability to pause and step through video will continue to be made available, but we must somehow limit the number of people who can do this at any given time. One solution that we came up with was a "members" section of the website, another was to post only one or two dances per month. Another still is to sell CD-ROMs of the clips, which is something we will probably do anyway, reagrdless. But at the moment, we're still discussing solutions, and haven't made any final decisions. We'll be glad to hear any input that you may have.

Keep in mind that solutions which cost us money will detract from our ability to provide more free information in general, while solutions which make us money will give us greater ability to produce more content on the website.

For example, taking all of our video clips and spreading them out on many different servers sounds appealing at first, but each server costs money, and that money comes straight out of my pocketbook. That means I have to teach more, and work less on the website.

If we choose a solution which makes money (such as a members section of the website), we can keep the same content online and even add more (I'd like to ultimately have 10 steps in every dance, American, Int'l, and social). We can then afford to hire more staff and programmers, freeing up my time and my partner's time to produce more content.

We're not here to make huge amounts of money, but whether we like it or not, money is an issue. We've been paying out of our own pockets for years in order to provide this free information, and we need to start thinking of ways to make it pay for itelf.

Thank you for your concern and understanding. And again, if you have any more ideas that I haven't mentioned here, we're all ears.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Atkinson www.ballroomdancers.com

We're going to try an experiment, and if it goes well, you might be in luck. But I'm going to need everybody's help on this.

Instead of putting all of our eggs in one basket, we're going to try having our video clips hosted and "mirrored" on various servers throughout the U.S. (or even in other countires, if possible). This will alleviate some of the the strain on our main server.

The trick is: We can't afford to pay for dozens of different servers each month, so we need to enlist the help of servers who are willing to take on, say, 10 clips (approx 10 to 25 megs) in exchange for advertising. Each link to a video clip will have next to it the name of the server on which it resides (or a company logo), which when clicked on will take the user to the server's own website.

Here's where you come in: We need your help finding servers who would be willing to do this. If you know of anyone, please ask them. If you don't know anyone with a server personally, look on the web for good prospects, or even help sponsor some of our clips by opening up an account on a server into which we can put some of the clips!

If this works, we may have a solution. If not, we'll have to go back to the drawing board. But it's worth a try.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Atkinson www.ballroomdancers.com