Video can create a more exciting experience for users viewing your Web site because it provides a range of possibilities that traditional Web design cannot offer. We can integrate clickable hotspots into a tour of your firm or allow visitors to self-direct their tour and ‘meet' staff members along the way. We can incorporate videotaped lectures and presentations into your site, allowing more people access to the information presented. If you can provide the video, Quick & Easy can provide the technology and expertise to incorporate the video into your site.

• What are the benefits of using video and audio on a Web site?
  
  News agencies like www.abcnews.com rely on video and audio presentations to enhance their delivery of daily news. Multimedia can add sophistication to your site along with an air of professionalism that text often cannot match. Sometimes, there is simply no substitute for actually hearing the voice of a senior partner or seeing video footage of the latest conference, lecture, or award ceremony involving a company or firm.
  
• How do we deliver video and audio on our site?
  
  Everything starts with your source video.
  It is sometimes believed that the quality of this master recording is irrelevant since the video will eventually be compressed for the Web anyway. This is not true! Compression tools are unforgiving of low quality video and audio products. Therefore, make certain that you are using the best video format that your budget allows. Some of the most popular professional, pro-consumer, and consumer formats include:
  
  

  (1) Beta SP (2) DV (3) MiniDV (4) Hi8 (5) SVHS (6) VHS

  
  
  It is now time to edit.
  Typically, only certain parts of a video are intended for broadcast on the Web. Quick & Easy can edit any video and remove the superfluous parts, targeting the video toward the public for which it is intended.
  
  

  Now the video is ready for compression.
  This is necessary in order to reduce the video's file size so that it can be streamed across a 56k modem, DSL/Cable connection, or T1 line. Uncompressed 720x486 video is 1 megabyte per second. This needs to be reduced to 300k per second for the fastest Internet connections.
  

• What is streaming media? What other options are available?
  
  When a video is streamed it is placed on a server that parses out the file to the user in real time as long as network bandwidth allows for it. The user can watch any part of the video at any time without downloading the whole file. We recommend this method for long clips (2 minutes or more).
  
  The alternative is to simply allow the user to download the file just like they would a jpeg or a PDF. QuickTime allows the user to watch segments of the video that have been downloaded but not skip to a part of the file that has not been transferred yet. We recommend this method for short clips (1 minute or less).
  
• What is the best Web video format?
  
  There are advantages to each of the major formats. QuickTime, RealOne, and Windows Media Video are the most commonly used.
  
  

  Format	User Favorites
  RealPlayer	14.6%
  Windows Media	18.3%
  QuickTime	13.1%
  Other	54%
  ° Source: How Stuff Works

  
  Windows Media Video
  can be streamed easily on Quick & Easy servers. Many people consider this to be the highest quality picture available with current technology. This codec is good for streaming but it can't be used as a regular download.

On demand Streaming

On-Demand streaming is the most common consuming type of streaming on the Internet. Using audio or video low or high band encoded files, users may connect to Quick & Easy servers and play or watch the piece of content which are stored on our servers. Quick & Easy uses Windows Media Server on Windows 2003 server from Microsoft to stream and deliver content to users. Each user listens to his own stream. Content providers can arrange their content into playlists which can be played back as low band or high band files to users.


Encoding Services

Quick & Easy provides on-demand multi-bitrate encoding for Windows Media Services. This content is encoded with the highest quality of encoding available to avoid stutters and pauses during playback. Whether your application is a simple audio track or full motion video, We can encode the content to the most optimum format to be played back.