For instance, you can play more than one video at once, something Windows
Media Player won??™t let you do. And it??™s kind enough to show detailed
error messages with enough information to solve the problem, such as listing
any missing codecs.
158 | Chapter 4: Working with Media
Handling Online Video
Ideally, video should be no different than any other web content, but when
was the last time you had trouble viewing static text and still images, or even
hearing audio, in web pages? But videos are different, and for several reasons:
??? The enormous size of video files forces web publishers to employ a series
of tricks, such as nonstandard streaming protocols, dedicated video servers,
and special browser plug-ins, to bring video to your desktop.
??? The large number of competing formats means that you must have at
least a half-dozen browser plug-ins??”not to mention all the required
codecs, described earlier in this chapter??”in order to play most online
video.
Figure 4-6. Media Player Classic is an alternative to the overblown Windows Media
Player and messy RealPlayer applications
Handling Online Video | 159
Working with
Media
??? The aforementioned plug-ins and codecs must be updated to keep up
with the technology.
??? Online video publishers??”particularly news organizations??”often juryrig
their content to make it difficult or impossible to download to your
hard disk. This means they rely more heavily on special plug-ins, Java-
Script, and other hand-waving, all of which increase the likelihood that
you??™ll run into a problem when you watch their videos.
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