Why are videos loading so slowly on iweb site?

Question

Level 1

15 points

Why are videos loading so slowly on iweb site?

So I built a site with lots of video, but each video is on its own separate page. Why do the videos take so long to long and then sometimes stop intermittently while playing? Would appreciate multiple responses for things to try. Also, what is the optimal file size for videos with iweb. (Mine are from 3-8MB mostly.)
HOSTING with GODADDY, not mobileme, if that matters.
Thank you in advance for your input!

Macbook, White, 2.4Ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Mar 14, 2011 3:05 PM

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Answer 1

Roddy

Level 6

17,265 points

Mar 14, 2011 3:44 PM in response to Womanhattan

If you are loading the movies into the iWeb by drag and drop they will take a long time to load and play.

Have a look at this section of iWeb for Musicians to see if you can find a method of playing your movies that you like....

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Movie-Video/Movie-Formats.html

If you have QuickTime Pro you can better prepare your movies for the internet.

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Answer 2

Womanhattan Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 14, 2011 4:15 PM in response to Roddy

Thanks so much -- this coding/embedding thing would probably work, so I appreciate it, but sounds more complicated than I want to get. Will search QuickTime Pro to see how that might help.
STILL OPEN to simple-to-understand, easy-to-do tips on how to make the videos load faster.

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

215,346 points

Mar 14, 2011 4:51 PM in response to Womanhattan

You will need to learn how to embed movie files in an iWeb page via HTML snippets in order to avoid having the video files load along with the page itself.

Create a test site or test page page in your site and experiment with different methods. If a test page in your existing site the page can be hidden from the navbar with some of Roddy's suggested methods and with some of mine which can be seen in this demo page: Opening Item in a New, Precisely Sized Window. This page has 9 videos on it in that manner: PhotoPresenter Animated Slideshow Themes.

However, if you videos are all Quicktime files the viewer will have to have Quicktime installed if they are to be able to view them. My method requires QT to be installed.

Also see Wyodor's post in this topic: http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13220796#13220796.

OT

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Answer 4

Womanhattan Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 15, 2011 6:33 AM in response to Old Toad

Thanks, this is something to consider, but first will explore this route: a friend of mine managed to get a ton of video on his iweb site that all loads almost instantly without doing the html thing -- he knew someone who compressed the files or something like that, so I may get more info from him and, if no luck there, may have to overcome my htmlophobia. I appreciate your suggestion!

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Answer 5

Wyodor

Level 6

19,930 points

Mar 15, 2011 7:04 AM in response to Womanhattan

My videos also load instantly.

Nothing to with iWeb but a lot to do with the videos.

http://www.wyodor.net/Tutorials/ImageWidget/ClickMovie.html
http://cafenoir.atspace.com/cultureclub/Movies.html

So learn to prepare videos for the Web. It's all available on your computer.

Practice.

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Answer 6

Womanhattan Author

Level 1

15 points

Mar 24, 2011 5:43 AM in response to Wyodor

While I appreciate all the suggestions above -- I truly do! -- I finally got my videos to load very quickly just by playing with the export settings in iMovie. In iMovieHD6, I was able to find the right the frame rate and bit rate by trial and error; in my case, exporting to Quicktime and using frame rates of 10 to 15 per second and setting the bit rate to 300 (with "optimized for streaming" selected) worked and allows my videos to start within a couple of seconds; as a final check, I went to the Apple store and tested my site on iPhone, iPad and Macbook, and the videos prepared this way loaded quickly on all devices. (In my case, 320 x 240 was a size that worked.) For videos that looked much crisper than the above and still loaded relatively quickly (though sometimes not as fast as above), the Mobile settings on iMovie08 worked. Also, a friend of mine had recommended Sorenson Squeeze as a fancy (and expensive) compression software option; they have a free trial (with watermark),and it seemed pretty easy to use, but after getting satisfactory results exporting through iMovie's Quicktime setting,buying additional software just wasn't necessary.

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