Video players

To view a video on this website, you need to have a video player installed on your computer.  To be precise, you must have a video player plug-in installed in your web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc.).  Not just any plug-in will do, though.  Each plug-in only plays certain video formats.

Most of the videos on this website are in Adobe's Flash format.  (Flash files have a .flv extension.)  To view them, you'll need to have Adobe's Flash Player (or another player that can play Flash files) installed in your browser.  Adobe's player is free, and can be downloaded from this page.

Some videos on this website may instead be in Apple's QuickTime format.  (QuickTime files have a .mov extension.)   Apple's free QuickTime Player can be downloaded from this page.

Downloading videos

This page gives you the information and steps necessary in order to download a video file so that you can store it on your computer and play it offline.  

Video quality

Video files are huge.  Full-screen, uncompressed video runs about 240 MB per minute, or about 14 GB per hour   At typical high-speed Internet connections, it would take a long time to view or download such videos.  As a result, the videos on this website have been compressed and reduced in size from the original to make the file sizes considerably smaller and reasonable for web viewing.  Unfortunately, this also reduces the quality of the video. The trade-off between file size and video quality is unavoidable.  If you want to watch these videos in a larger size, you can change your computer's screen settings before viewing them online.  The quality of the larger image will, of course, be no better than in the smaller size.

Internet speeds

The speed of your Internet connection is crucial to your ability to view videos, regardless of whether it's at this website or others.  Dial-up Internet access (normally around 40-56 kilobits per second (kbps) is too slow to make viewing videos practical.  However, for those with dial-up access who would just like to get a sense of what's in the videos on this website, a dial-up viewing option is offered.  The size of the screen is very small, though, and the quality of the image is poor.  But, you should be able to see if you'd be interested in viewing the larger, "standard" version.   The standard versions were encoded such that anyone with an Internet connection speed of 500 kbps or higher should be able to view the video stream without any buffering or delay.  If you don't know how fast your Internet connection is, go to Speedtest to test it and find out.   

Video screen size

The standard screen size for videos on this website is 640 (vertical) by 360 (horizontal) pixels--a 16:9 aspect ratio--for videos originally recorded in high definition.  Videos originally recorded in standard definition appear in 480 by 360 pixels, a 4:3 aspect ratio.  By way of example, a video iPod has a 320 by 240 screen, and the iPhone's is 480 by 320.  There's no reason why videos on this website can't be stored on a video iPod or iPhone if the appropriate conversion software is used.

Buffering

If, while viewing the video online, the video stops and starts repeatedly, it's because your Internet connection isn't fast enough to allow continuous, real-time viewing.  In that situation, your computer will play the video data that's been stored in its "buffer", then, when that's been depleted, pause playing until enough data is received to fill the buffer once again.  It's annoying, but there's really no remedy other than getting a faster Internet connection.  My advice is to click on the "pause" button in the video controls (the video will continue to be streamed to your computer) and do something else while the rest of the video finishes loading.  Once the entire video has finished loading, you won't encounter any buffering during playback.  

Viewing or download problems

If you have the appropriate video player installed on your computer, you have a fast-enough Internet speed, and still can't view or download a video, let me know.  There may be a bad link that I haven't caught.