A boring, though informative post about our video format
Starting this week, we’ll be using the H.264 compression codec. For most of you, that phrase probably meant absolutely nothing. Others of you, I’m sure, have already stopped reading this–which is a shame, because I was about to explain it using words you know and understand.
H.264 is a super high-res compression codec, used to make very large video files into very small video files–all while preserving the video quality. What that means is that from now on, our videos will look a hell of a lot better that they ever have, and they’ll take even less time to load. Cool, right?
However: in order for our videos to play on your computer, you’ll need Quicktime 7–which, if you have a relatively new version of iTunes, is probably on your computer already. But if for some reason the videos don’t load for you, update your copy of iTunes and that should do the trick.
Enjoy!
PS. For those of you Windows purists who refuse to download Quicktime 7 or iTunes, you’ll still be able to watch our videos on YouTube–though the quality will be mindnumbingly poor (like the quality of all videos on YouTube).
August 13th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Or the quality of Ben’s character when he doesn’t respond to any of the messages I send him. But, huzzah for high quality videos!
August 13th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Welcome to the world of communicating with me. Hey Gabe!
August 13th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Sounds neat!
August 13th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
ol’ lappy here is too old to be compatable with quicktime 7–sweet new family desktop, here i come!
August 13th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Sweeet!
August 14th, 2006 at 6:10 am
Oooo excellent!
August 14th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
sounds tasty, I’m ready for some hi-res action!
August 15th, 2006 at 3:33 am
Does that mean I’ll be able to watch the old ones now? For some reason they stopped working and every time i click on them it says I need an active X control. When i click on o.k. it shuts down my internet. Plus it would be awesome if you guys released the old ones on podcast. An ipod full of Olde English would surely kick ass.
August 15th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Are you using Internet Explorer? I highly recommend you download Firefox.
August 16th, 2006 at 1:54 am
DONE!
In a minute. When i have the time. Sometime or other.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
For those not wishing to download and install “Let’s take over all of your settings without asking” Quicktime yet also hating Youtube’s “You’ll really have to redownload this if you want to watch it again” functionality, the open-source, free vlc media player here should play h.264 quite well. It’s also the only player I’ve found that can play every Olde English release ever (some of those old ones really use some obscure encodings).
August 16th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Thanks, Krister! That’s a great tip — though I should point out that you have to download the videos to your hard drive to play them with VLC (and that Quicktime Player does, in fact, play every since one of our old videos, since they were all encoded using Quicktime.)
August 17th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I’m going to one up Krister and say if you wanna watch h.264 video to get Quicktime Alternative (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm). While VLC is kick ass, Quicktime Alternative has much better plug-in support and installs throughout the OS, not just in VLC.