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Our movie clips are provided in three different formats: MPEG, QuickTime and Animated GIF. Each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.
Animated GIF: This is the simplest format, and most browsers will play these for you automatically, without the need for a plug-in or external application. You should just be able to click on the link and the movie will play. On the other hand, you can't control the speed of the playing, and can't start and stop the movie or step through it frame by frame. Finally, since this format is the largest, in general, so animated GIF movies will take the longest to download. To help decrease the size of the files, we have reduced the dimensions of the images in this format, so they will appear a bit smaller on screen.
MPEG format: MPEG movies provide for the best compression, so they are smaller files to download, in general; however, the quality is sometimes reduced by this, as well. You may find one of the other formats is clearer. You will also need a special plug-in to view these movies; Apple's
QuickTime 4 (which is available for both Macintosh and IBM PC platforms) should do the trick. Be sure you obtain the MPEG extension for QuickTime for this.With this plug-in, you will be able to start and stop the movie, and step through it frame by frame. The MPEG format expects to have 30 frames per second, but this makes for some very large movie files. In order to reduce the file sizes, we used 7.5 frames per second, and had each frame repeated 4 times. This should play properly at 30 frames per second, while still making the files reasonably sized. If you step through the movie one frame at a time, however, you will need to step four frames before the image changes.
- QuickTime format: This format provides for reasonable compression while still maintaining good quality images. The files are generally larger than the MPEG format, but still smaller than animated GIFs. You will need to use Apple's
QuickTime 4 plug-in (available for both Macintosh and IBM PC platforms) in order to view these movies. With this, you will be able to start and stop the movie and step through it frame by frame. The compression method is the Sorenson video method, so you will need a version of QuickTime that support it. Versions 4 and above should do.You should select the format that is best suited to your computer configuration and network connection speed.
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