Playing Online Video
You can view the videos either by playing them directly from the site or by downloading them first and then playing them. When you play a video directly, your Web browser will open a page with a video player and begin to cache the video. You can then play the video but the video will not be saved on your hard drive (not easily found) and cannot be played again later without reloading the page. When you download and play a video, you can sometimes save the video to your hard drive and after it is completely downloaded you just need to locate the video on your hard drive and can then play the video any time you like.
If a video is starting and stopping often, or just says buffering without starting, you can press the pause button and wait a few minutes for things to get caught up (if the connection is very poor you may need to wait an hour or more). After waiting you can then press play again and things should stream smoothly.
Downloading Embedded Videos
Many sites will embed the videos into the website your are viewing. These cannot be directly saved. However, there are software tools available that may allow you to download them for later viewing. You can then burn them to a DVD for playback on an external device, like a DVD player.
Burning Downloaded Video Files to a DVD
Once you have downloaded a video, converting it to a DVD in a format that will play on a standard DVD player requires converting the file to a special format that DVD players can recognize. Your first step will be to convert the file to a standard initial format, like .AVI. Using a service like VideoDownloader will save an online video file in .FLV format, but you will still need a program that can convert it to .AVI. There are many free FLV players, but that will only allow you to watch the video on your computer. You can do a search on the Google to find free utilities that will convert a FLV file to AVI format.
Once you have the videos in .AVI format, you can use Nero StartSmart, dvdSanta, or some other DVD video burning program to burn these videos onto a DVD so you can watch them on any standard DVD player. Here is a link with more information on creating a DVD from an AVI file using free tools. While the free approach works, most people will find it much easier to buy a commercial tool, like Nero StartSmart. Another solution is to get a DVD player that plays mpeg-4 files (Magnasonic DVD6118-4 does this and costs about $20), so you can just burn the .AVI file directly to a dvd-rw disk and play it on a TV immediately after you burn it.
Another approach is to connect your computer to a TV and just watch them directly skipping the DVD entirely (see below).
VideoHelp.com is a good source for finding answers to your video conversion questions.
TV Playback
Tired of watching stuff on your small computer screen? Several companies now have relatively cheap hardware cards that allow you to play video from your computer on a regular TV. You can also connect your video output to an LCD video projector and get the full movie experience. You can search for them on Google.
Play a video in Windows Media Player
- Locate the video that you wish to play
- Click on the play or download button
- If it starts playing, then you have everything working.
- Depending on the file size of the video you have chosen, this may happen quickly, or it may take some time to start for the player to buffer the video
- If nothing comes up, you are most likely missing plugins for your browser. There will usually be a link to download the necessary plugin. Do not download a plugin from a site you do not trust, since it is possible that it contains spyware or a virus. It is best to go to a trusted source, like apple.com, microsoft.com, etc., and download the players from that site. See list below for access to the latest browser video plugins. Open Windows Media Player, pull down the tools menu, click on the last option called "Options"
- Click on the "File Types" tab. Make sure that "Windows Video File" and "Movie File (MPEG)" are chosen
- Click OK
- Close Windows Media Player
- Return to step 2 above
- If this does not work, downloading the current version of windows media player may solve the problem, this can be found at microsoft.com/downloads
Play a video in Quicktime Player
- Locate the video that you wish to play.
- Click on the download arrow or play button.
- Wait for the page to redirect
- After redirecting you should see the Quicktime logo and the video will begin to cache and play
- If you do not see the Quicktime logo, that means you will need to install the Quicktime plugin which can be done by downloading the Quicktime player which in turn will automatically install the quicktime plugin at (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/)
Online Video Resources
- ButterBlog
- The Top Undiscovered Websites - Undiscovered Travel, Streaming Video, News, Sports, and Music Sites.
- Top TVLinks Alternatives
- A list of great TVLinks alternatives that allow you to watch your favorite TV shows free online.
- Ally Source
- Everything great on the internet - best free sites - where you can find the best free sites movie, games, freeware and other finds. Why go thru all the hassle of searching the web, when you can just click on a link.
- Business of Video
- Video blog covering media distribution, advertising, television, marketing, etc. Great site to stay on top of the latest happenings in online video.
- Internet Video Magazine
- The best site on the web for learning how to create and post your own internet video masterpieces.
- VideoMaker
- Information on video production hardware, directing, and filming techniques.
- VideoHelp
- Learn about all the different video formats and ways of converting between them.
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