League of Women Voters® of Virginia

League of Women Voters®
of Montgomery County, VA

What is Progressive Video?

• Wikipedia to the rescue again!

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_download

• This method stores pieces (chunks) of the video on the viewers computer in temporary files which are then played, in the proper sequence, on the computer.

• The rate of playback by the receiving computer can exceed the download rate and cause some starts and stops on slower systems. In such cases, the video will restart once the next packet has completed its download.

Notes:

The person recording the event stores the video file on a server. The viewer then connects to the server and a download of the file to the viewer's computer starts.

While the viewer can begin watching immediately, if the speed of playback exceeds the speed of the download, the video will stop and then restart once more of the file has downloaded.

This is a much more cost effective means of transmission than is streaming video BUT because the file download to the viewers computer, it is possible for the viewer to capture and save the video.

This 'piracy' is a bad thing only if you have something which you hope to generate revenue from. If you are trying to get information out to people, it can be a wonderful asset.