Downloadable Vs Streaming Video

MissEve · 02-21-2003

I've always had streaming video instead of downloadable because I thought that members would stay longer if they couldnt just download a bunch of video and cancel. Am I retarded?

I guess Im starting to think that if you have a slow connection you might start a download and let it go instead of trying to watch streamed video that looks like shit on a dialup.

Any ideas? If I started offering downloads what format and what size of clips should I offer? Now I have full length movies streamed in Real broken down into 3-5 parts.

Mike AI · 02-21-2003

Miss Eve, I really think you are going to need to offer both. That way everyone will be happy.

Peaches · 02-21-2003

Quote:

Originally posted by MissEve@Feb 21 2003, 05:48 PM
Am I retarded?

Well, yes, but that has more to do with your taste in men (at least the two I'm aware of) than your video question

(I'm going to pay for that one, I can feel it.........)

Personally, and I'm probably retarded too, I won't download a video because I'm virus paranoid. If I go to a site and it starts downloading, or I have to download something, I leave. I'd MUCH rather view a streaming video. And I could be getting a virus JUST as easily - I don't know. Plus, even on DSL, it still takes SO much longer to download something to view it than watch a streaming video.

That's my non-tech, usually non-porno viewing opinion

(and I really do love both your old and current bfs - really - I swear...don't let them hurt me, OK?)

MissEve · 02-21-2003

Mike, thats what Im thinking. I already have the streaming so adding the downloads will only be a minor pain. I just dont know what format or formats to offer.

Peaches!! The two you KNOW OF are good guys.

The others are maybe not so good, lol

Peaches · 02-21-2003

Quote:

Originally posted by MissEve@Feb 21 2003, 05:58 PM
Peaches!! The two you KNOW OF are good guys. The others are maybe not so good, lol

Hehehe - they know I love 'em!

Heck, I used one as fill in date, lol!

Mutt would probably be a good person to ask about the download video formats.

Hooper · 02-21-2003

HTML

<sarcasm>
there is a group of guys who seem to know a lot about streaming video.. i think they are called ACACIA media.

you should give them a ring and let them know what you're doing. i bet the'll help you out

)
</sarcasm>

Last edited by Hooper at Feb 21 2003, 06:02 PM

The Other Steve · 02-21-2003

Yet one of the most successful video operations in this business only offers download - he shoots all his own stuff and updates daily - charges something like 18.95 per month and has an insane number of rebills every month.

02-21-2003

Hey Evil One

I've had far more positive feedback from members since I started aggressively agumenting the downloadable video section on my site. The feeds don't seem to go over well at all. It could be just that there's not much out there in my niche, but aside from the live video, there isn't much reaction, at least nothing positive, to the feeds I'm spending so much money on every month.

With the price of downloadable clips dropping like a stone, it makes far more sense to me to spend the money I might spend expanding feeds on licensed stuff. For 500 a month, I can put up a lot of video clips.

The format depends a lot on the producer and frankly, my members don't seem to care much. I stopped using Real a long time ago due to tons of techinical problems and the fact that most producers, if they're not providing mpegs, are putting out their content in Windows Media and/or Quicktime.

If I had to choose only one format, it would be Windows Media, for the relatively small file size versus the quality of the streams now available.

I try whenever possible to offer both 56K and Broadband clips, but the majority of my members seem to be on broadband nowadays. It kinda sucks for me, though, since I don't have broadband, to upload all that video, but the difference in retention is worth the time.

I update video 2 to 3 times a week on my site now and my new tour, hopefully going in today, pushes downloads very hard. It's the first time in a tour that I've put my video page before my pics page.

If you are going to have custom video shot for your site, try to get reality or at least POV style video, that's really what the surfers want now. It's extremely expensive, but as soon as some of the traffic deals I made in Vegas start paying off, that's the direction my site is going to take.

I know that video is tough to get in your niche, probably a lot harder than in mine, but if you need some hints, ask Trevor

Edited for grammar.

Last edited by originalheather at Feb 21 2003, 03:58 PM

Menace · 02-21-2003

I like downloadable from a "use" angle...

.WMV would probably be good for your bandwidth usage but touchy sometimes from what I've seen in quality.

What in my mind would be an 'ideal' customer minded arrangement is .mpg or .avi in smaller clips and larger ones too. Like 5-10 meg 1-2 minute in addition to like 50 meg clips too.

I don't much care for the monster clips like on those adultbouncer sites because downloading 200 megs just to see if you like something is counter productive.

But then again I'm an outcast in the industry so

-Dennis

Hell Puppy · 02-21-2003

There are pro's and con's to both ways of doing it.

If you have the pipe and a good streaming server, streaming is the better solution. If you find a working DRM solution you can prevent your videos from being plastered all over Usenet and P2P. And on the user's side, the stream will adjust to the amount of pipe available. Plus they get fast forward. So they can sample a video very well without downloading the entire thing.

The downside? If the user has low bandwidth or you do not have enough pipe and server online to keep up with demand, the viewing experience is going to suck, and they're going to cancel. Remember, you'll need a streaming server, not just a normal webserver.

Letting users download reasonable sized MPEG clips (4-5 minutes) will insure that they see good quality videos on virtually any machine with virtually any linespeed. However, they cant fast forward, so they'll usually download the entire clip. You can run it on a normal server, but expect your bandwidth to take an ass whipping if you offer a lot of these. Also, expect to see your clips being traded on Usenet and P2P. This can be used to yield some traffic....albeit piss poor traffic.

In either case, the quality of the clips will ultimately drive user satisfaction. It's currently easier to get it right with downloads...it's tough to sustain enough bandwidth on a big site to have streaming look good and stay in a window larger than a postage stamp.

Mutt · 02-21-2003

MissEve, surfers, both dialup and broadband surfers, prefer downloadables over streaming movies. MPEG is number 1 preferred format by far, WindowsMedia format also popular.

The problem with downloadable clips you alluded to - the smart ones will suck them all down the minute they get into your members area. So it can be expensive to give them the big downloadable MPEG clips. Nobody wants to watch a dialup stream of any kind, i have no idea why the plugin providers even offer it, i think it just frustrates and disappoints people.

Something I think movie heavy sites might think about doing is using software to monitor how much members are downloading, set a daily limit, set it liberally enough that you aren't going to piss off most of your members but at a level that will catch the download pigs. I know some sites are doing this. You can also have the software make it so that you can set how many different downloads they can do at a time.

Downloadable movies are what they want.

Rox · 02-22-2003

I'm a cheap bitch, so I'd probably only offer downloadable files in a smaller format, 100K or 56K WMV or MOV files, to discourage the grab & run types. Gotta have a good server for streaming though...

I like QuickTime for the quality and the fact that it works on Mac or PC, so if I could only pick one format, that'd be it (MPEGs aside, of course).

Then again my comments come from the perspective of serving video clips on a site where they're FREE, definitely not porn (though the Femme Fatale clips I encoded today were rather hot LOL), and generally only a few minutes long at most. So what the hell do I know?

Dravyk · 02-22-2003

Quote:

Originally posted by Hell Puppy@Feb 21 2003, 11:22 PM
Also, expect to see your clips being traded on Usenet and P2P. This can be used to yield some traffic....albeit piss poor traffic.

If you're doing downloadables, either have an opening to each clip or else have your URL superimposed (small as not to piss them off and cover up the action) across the entire clip. Traffic is traffic, but only when they know where the movie came from.

Last edited by Dravyk at Feb 22 2003, 02:51 AM

02-22-2003

Quote:

Originally posted by Hell Puppy@Feb 21 2003, 08:22 PM
There are pro's and con's to both ways of doing it.

If you have the pipe and a good streaming server, streaming is the better solution. If you find a working DRM solution you can prevent your videos from being plastered all over Usenet and P2P. And on the user's side, the stream will adjust to the amount of pipe available. Plus they get fast forward. So they can sample a video very well without downloading the entire thing.

The downside? If the user has low bandwidth or you do not have enough pipe and server online to keep up with demand, the viewing experience is going to suck, and they're going to cancel. Remember, you'll need a streaming server, not just a normal webserver.

Letting users download reasonable sized MPEG clips (4-5 minutes) will insure that they see good quality videos on virtually any machine with virtually any linespeed. However, they cant fast forward, so they'll usually download the entire clip. You can run it on a normal server, but expect your bandwidth to take an ass whipping if you offer a lot of these. Also, expect to see your clips being traded on Usenet and P2P. This can be used to yield some traffic....albeit piss poor traffic.

In either case, the quality of the clips will ultimately drive user satisfaction. It's currently easier to get it right with downloads...it's tough to sustain enough bandwidth on a big site to have streaming look good and stay in a window larger than a postage stamp.

I'd disagree 100% that streaming is the better solution. You've totally failed to look at it from the surfers point of view. I have a fast connection and would still never join a site with streaming only. Even on a good connection the net is far too flaky for streaming to be effective. But then much the same has been said in many other posts here.

UncleJimmy · 02-23-2003

the 2c from me is:

streaming = bad

download = good

unga bunga...

*KK* · 02-23-2003

Of course the surfer is going to say they want downloadable... that way when they've cancelled their membership to your site they can still watch all the goodies they got from it. When you go to the movies they don't give you a dvd copy to take home with you do they? If you rent a movie at Blockbuster you don't get to keep it for life either do you?

The only way that downloadable is good is if you can STOP them from seeing the movies again when they have cancelled and if you can market them again at the point they attempt to do so.

Which is entirely possible. Along with some other things that would allow your members to choose what format they wanted to use based on the price they were paying...

Hooper · 02-23-2003

Agreed KK.

Streaming gives you a lot more control over the media.. thus a lot more control over the surfers.

I really like an analogy that I made on another board *cough*patting self on back*cough*... but if you consider members areas to be akin to a movie theater... suppose i give you a day long matinee pass..or rather.. i SELL you a day long matinee pass.

Well you are definitely allowed to watch the movies all day.. whatever movies are playing... bounce from theater to theater.. but you are limited by how long you are allowed to watch them.

Now if i have 100 movies playing... odds are that you're going to come back next weekend to watch again because there is really just no way you can watch that many movies in a day.

If however you are a complete asshole and send a friend into each theater to video tape each movie (akin to downloadable content) then you get to watch all those movies over the exact same amount of time.. cept i'm not earning my ticket prices.

Bottom line is that there is a gigantic misconception... surfers (and suprisingly some webmasters) think that I/We/You open our members areas up with the understanding that you can just get EVERYTHING as fast as you can and save it to your hard drive for sharing with your buddies and watching over and over again long after your membership as expired and that this is OK rather than understanding that we stack the content intentionally to keep surfers there beyond the trial period and to keep them recurring.

Hooper · 02-23-2003

btw.. KK.. i think the spring in my mouse is failing due to over-clicking your signature.

Plugger · 02-23-2003

Downloadable. Personally, I cannot whack to the same video too many times, so I am always looking for updates. Updates are the key. We can still learn a few things from the video industry, and that is to keep pumping out new porn. People (i.e. guys, surfers) are ALWAYS looking for something that is new. The shelf life of porn in short, so to think that guys (i.e. surfers) will keep comming back to see the same clip(s) over and over is, IMHO, not valid. They want something new. Besides, bandwidth is cheap, so the cost factors are relatively minimal now . . .

Sabby · 02-23-2003

Do streamable video on site...

and sell vhs/dvd... or downdload video

the more you can sell them... the more they will pay.

And Plugger sweetie... your free cam system sucks ass!!!!!!!!!! and more!

Sabby

(Serge... where is my boobie smilie??? )

Sabby

Mutt · 02-23-2003

Plugger is right, bandwidth is cheap ............ change your trial membership to a cut down version of the site like CollegeFuckFest does so the site suckers can't do what they want to do, pay 2.95 and steal the whole site, but for the customers who becoming paying members, you can afford the bandwidth to let them download movies. As much as i think AdultBouncer is nothing more than a the world's biggest repository of stolen content, the secret to their success is downloadable movies.
What's bandwidth cost these days? I would guess Adult Bouncer's bandwidth costs them maybe 20 cents a gig? I think installing software that stops the real download hogs is doable. In fact I think Pennywize can do this already.

Take a look at Ed Powers.com lately? No Ken is not making all 200 or so Ed movies available for download but he is putting one new movie a week up that is downloadable.

What is Plugger's free cam?

02-21-2003	#2
Mike AI Administrator Want to see your own Advertising Here! Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 11,618	Miss Eve, I really think you are going to need to offer both. That way everyone will be happy. __________________ Make big money on your Domains! Why wait 40 days to get paid with the other guys? Parked.com pays the most for your traffic, and cuts checks twice a month!

02-21-2003	#7
The Other Steve Members Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Australia mate! Posts: 232	Yet one of the most successful video operations in this business only offers download - he shoots all his own stuff and updates daily - charges something like 18.95 per month and has an insane number of rebills every month. __________________ Sex Story Text If you need words then you need us.

02-22-2003	#12
Rox Members Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 323	I'm a cheap bitch, so I'd probably only offer downloadable files in a smaller format, 100K or 56K WMV or MOV files, to discourage the grab & run types. Gotta have a good server for streaming though... I like QuickTime for the quality and the fact that it works on Mac or PC, so if I could only pick one format, that'd be it (MPEGs aside, of course). Then again my comments come from the perspective of serving video clips on a site where they're FREE, definitely not porn (though the Femme Fatale clips I encoded today were rather hot LOL), and generally only a few minutes long at most. So what the hell do I know? __________________ Visit my blog: ObnoxiousBitch - Trash Talk Today

02-23-2003	#17
Hooper Members Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1,156	Agreed KK. Streaming gives you a lot more control over the media.. thus a lot more control over the surfers. I really like an analogy that I made on another board coughpatting self on backcough... but if you consider members areas to be akin to a movie theater... suppose i give you a day long matinee pass..or rather.. i SELL you a day long matinee pass. Well you are definitely allowed to watch the movies all day.. whatever movies are playing... bounce from theater to theater.. but you are limited by how long you are allowed to watch them. Now if i have 100 movies playing... odds are that you're going to come back next weekend to watch again because there is really just no way you can watch that many movies in a day. If however you are a complete asshole and send a friend into each theater to video tape each movie (akin to downloadable content) then you get to watch all those movies over the exact same amount of time.. cept i'm not earning my ticket prices. Bottom line is that there is a gigantic misconception... surfers (and suprisingly some webmasters) think that I/We/You open our members areas up with the understanding that you can just get EVERYTHING as fast as you can and save it to your hard drive for sharing with your buddies and watching over and over again long after your membership as expired and that this is OK rather than understanding that we stack the content intentionally to keep surfers there beyond the trial period and to keep them recurring. __________________ Quickbuck is paying $100 Per trial join.

02-23-2003	#18
Hooper Members Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1,156	btw.. KK.. i think the spring in my mouse is failing due to over-clicking your signature. __________________ Quickbuck is paying $100 Per trial join.

02-21-2003	#1
MissEve Members Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 428	I've always had streaming video instead of downloadable because I thought that members would stay longer if they couldnt just download a bunch of video and cancel. Am I retarded? I guess Im starting to think that if you have a slow connection you might start a download and let it go instead of trying to watch streamed video that looks like shit on a dialup. Any ideas? If I started offering downloads what format and what size of clips should I offer? Now I have full length movies streamed in Real broken down into 3-5 parts.

02-21-2003	#8
originalheather Guest Posts: n/a	Hey Evil One I've had far more positive feedback from members since I started aggressively agumenting the downloadable video section on my site. The feeds don't seem to go over well at all. It could be just that there's not much out there in my niche, but aside from the live video, there isn't much reaction, at least nothing positive, to the feeds I'm spending so much money on every month. With the price of downloadable clips dropping like a stone, it makes far more sense to me to spend the money I might spend expanding feeds on licensed stuff. For 500 a month, I can put up a lot of video clips. The format depends a lot on the producer and frankly, my members don't seem to care much. I stopped using Real a long time ago due to tons of techinical problems and the fact that most producers, if they're not providing mpegs, are putting out their content in Windows Media and/or Quicktime. If I had to choose only one format, it would be Windows Media, for the relatively small file size versus the quality of the streams now available. I try whenever possible to offer both 56K and Broadband clips, but the majority of my members seem to be on broadband nowadays. It kinda sucks for me, though, since I don't have broadband, to upload all that video, but the difference in retention is worth the time. I update video 2 to 3 times a week on my site now and my new tour, hopefully going in today, pushes downloads very hard. It's the first time in a tour that I've put my video page before my pics page. If you are going to have custom video shot for your site, try to get reality or at least POV style video, that's really what the surfers want now. It's extremely expensive, but as soon as some of the traffic deals I made in Vegas start paying off, that's the direction my site is going to take. I know that video is tough to get in your niche, probably a lot harder than in mine, but if you need some hints, ask Trevor Edited for grammar. Last edited by originalheather at Feb 21 2003, 03:58 PM

02-21-2003	#9
Menace Members Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: New England Posts: 161	I like downloadable from a "use" angle... .WMV would probably be good for your bandwidth usage but touchy sometimes from what I've seen in quality. What in my mind would be an 'ideal' customer minded arrangement is .mpg or .avi in smaller clips and larger ones too. Like 5-10 meg 1-2 minute in addition to like 50 meg clips too. I don't much care for the monster clips like on those adultbouncer sites because downloading 200 megs just to see if you like something is counter productive. But then again I'm an outcast in the industry so -Dennis

02-21-2003	#10
Hell Puppy Fat Fucking Nobody Want to see your own Advertising Here! Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 6,523	There are pro's and con's to both ways of doing it. If you have the pipe and a good streaming server, streaming is the better solution. If you find a working DRM solution you can prevent your videos from being plastered all over Usenet and P2P. And on the user's side, the stream will adjust to the amount of pipe available. Plus they get fast forward. So they can sample a video very well without downloading the entire thing. The downside? If the user has low bandwidth or you do not have enough pipe and server online to keep up with demand, the viewing experience is going to suck, and they're going to cancel. Remember, you'll need a streaming server, not just a normal webserver. Letting users download reasonable sized MPEG clips (4-5 minutes) will insure that they see good quality videos on virtually any machine with virtually any linespeed. However, they cant fast forward, so they'll usually download the entire clip. You can run it on a normal server, but expect your bandwidth to take an ass whipping if you offer a lot of these. Also, expect to see your clips being traded on Usenet and P2P. This can be used to yield some traffic....albeit piss poor traffic. In either case, the quality of the clips will ultimately drive user satisfaction. It's currently easier to get it right with downloads...it's tough to sustain enough bandwidth on a big site to have streaming look good and stay in a window larger than a postage stamp.

02-21-2003	#11
Mutt Members Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1,087	MissEve, surfers, both dialup and broadband surfers, prefer downloadables over streaming movies. MPEG is number 1 preferred format by far, WindowsMedia format also popular. The problem with downloadable clips you alluded to - the smart ones will suck them all down the minute they get into your members area. So it can be expensive to give them the big downloadable MPEG clips. Nobody wants to watch a dialup stream of any kind, i have no idea why the plugin providers even offer it, i think it just frustrates and disappoints people. Something I think movie heavy sites might think about doing is using software to monitor how much members are downloading, set a daily limit, set it liberally enough that you aren't going to piss off most of your members but at a level that will catch the download pigs. I know some sites are doing this. You can also have the software make it so that you can set how many different downloads they can do at a time. Downloadable movies are what they want.

02-23-2003	#15
UncleJimmy Members Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mi Casa Posts: 35	the 2c from me is: streaming = bad download = good unga bunga...

02-23-2003	#16
KK Members Respin bullshit press Your Comments Are Welcomed Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 2,581	Of course the surfer is going to say they want downloadable... that way when they've cancelled their membership to your site they can still watch all the goodies they got from it. When you go to the movies they don't give you a dvd copy to take home with you do they? If you rent a movie at Blockbuster you don't get to keep it for life either do you? The only way that downloadable is good is if you can STOP them from seeing the movies again when they have cancelled and if you can market them again at the point they attempt to do so. Which is entirely possible. Along with some other things that would allow your members to choose what format they wanted to use based on the price they were paying...

02-23-2003	#19
Plugger Members Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 84	Downloadable. Personally, I cannot whack to the same video too many times, so I am always looking for updates. Updates are the key. We can still learn a few things from the video industry, and that is to keep pumping out new porn. People (i.e. guys, surfers) are ALWAYS looking for something that is new. The shelf life of porn in short, so to think that guys (i.e. surfers) will keep comming back to see the same clip(s) over and over is, IMHO, not valid. They want something new. Besides, bandwidth is cheap, so the cost factors are relatively minimal now . . . __________________ {{{TwIsTedcaSh.com}}}

02-23-2003	#20
Sabby GOLD DIGGER Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1,421	Do streamable video on site... and sell vhs/dvd... or downdload video the more you can sell them... the more they will pay. And Plugger sweetie... your free cam system sucks ass!!!!!!!!!! and more! Sabby (Serge... where is my boobie smilie??? ) Sabby __________________ PROMOTE MY LIVE CAM and make 25% of everything your members spend for LIFE!!! (My screen Name is ImAllBoobs).