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Bandwidth available plays a large part in determining what your NetShow content
will look like and how sophisticated the content can be. Here are some
samples at various bandwidths and using various codecs to help illustrate the
impact that bandwidth plays when creating NetShow content.
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One of the first things you need to do when creating NetShow content is to
decide which bandwidth(s) you are going to target. This is important because
some types of content are just not suited to some bandwidths, and the content
will need to be adjusted. For example, over a 28.8 Kbps Internet connection,
having an entire football game would not be acceptable. That's because trying
to fit a full field's action into a small (160 x 112 or 176 x 144) window would
net you what looks like a screen full of ants scurrying from one end of the
screen to another. However, having video interviews with sports stars would
be perfectly acceptable and the quality would be good.
As you get familiar with creating NetShow content, you will learn that
there are some key factors you
can play with so that your content will fit in a certain amount of bandwidth:
- Frame size. The bigger the image sizes in pixels, the more bandwidth
it will take for the content to play. In order to keep the
picture size large, you will need to sacrifice some of the
factors below.
- Frame rate. The higher the frame rate, the more bandwidth it will
take to play the content back. In order to keep the frame rate
high, you will need to sacrifice frame size, picture quality, and/or
number of colors.
- Picture quality. The higher the picture quality, the more bandwidth
it will take to play the content back. In order to keep the
picture quality high, you will need to sacrifice frame size,
frame rate, and/or number of colors.
- Number of colors. Sometimes you will find that limiting the palette
of colors you choose from in creating content will help conserve
bandwidth. If you want to maintain bright, rich colors, though,
you will need to adjust the factors above to fit the content in
over low bandwidths.
Also, if you are ever curious how to tell what bandwidth an ASF will play at,
while it is playing, right-click on it, select Properties, then Advanced, then
you'll see a listing called Bandwidth. This is measured in bits per second.
Also, if you want to see what codecs were used in creating the content, while
the ASF is playing, right-click on it, select Properties, then Codecs, and the
codecs are listed. Note that if no codecs are shown, it's probably because the
content was created prior to NetShow Beta 2.