Video File Formats
As with audio, in the early days of the Web, adding video to a web page meant using one of the currently available video formats (such as QuickTime or AVI) and linking it to a page for download. The evolution of streaming media has changed that, and now adding video content like movie trailers, news broadcasts, even live programming to a web site is much more practical and widespread.
This section looks at the video formats that are most common for web delivery.
QuickTime Movie (.mov)
QuickTime is a highly versatile and well-supported media format. While originally developed as a video format, it has evolved into a container format capable of storing all sorts of media (still images, audio, video, Flash, and SMIL presentations). For the complete list of file formats supported by QuickTime, see http://www.apple.com/quicktime/specifications.html.
QuickTime, a system extension that makes it possible to view audio/video information on a computer, was introduced by Apple Computer in 1991. Although developed for the Macintosh, it is also supported on PCs via QuickTime for Windows. QuickTime has grown to be the industry standard for multimedia development, and most hardware and software offer QuickTime support. Both Netscape Navigator 3.0+ and Internet Explorer 3.0+ come with QuickTime plug-in players, so the majority of web readers are able to view QuickTime movies right in the browser.
Streaming
QuickTime movies can be streamed using a number of streaming server ...
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