Web pages can deliver
a wide range of things: text, static
images, photos, movies, videos, sound,
music, interactive elements and a lot
more besides.
The world wide web
is a now a media rich environment.
You can watch video
clips by clicking on a link in a web
page and you can hear music or someone
speaking if you have speakers connected
to your computer. Sounds can be delivered
through web pages. These can range
from simple sound effects through to
full length pieces of music. Voice
can of course also be transmitted over
the web: so, you can hold a conversation
with someone in an audio chat room.
Some videos are streamed
into the web browser, allowing fairly
long videos to be watched. A web cam
can be viewed through a web browser,
with access to the web cam's images
being made via a link on a web page.
In some cases, pictures
can be provided from web pages that
allow the viewer to steer the angle
of view or even rotate the point of
view through 360 degrees. Such things
allow the viewer to zoom in and out,
pan and tilt the camera, i.e.
the point of view of the person looking
at the picture.
What is needed
to watch videos and hear sound?
All this depends
of course on the capabilities of both
your computer and your operating system
(e.g. windows).
There are a variety
of files that deliver various media
and these have different file endings,
For example, a simple sound file would
have a .wav file extension. A video
might have an .mpg file ending.
Computers look at
these file extensions and associate
them with particular software packages,
such as Windows Media Play or Apple
Quicktime. For the media to work, the
file extension must be associated with
a suitable package that will handle
the output.
Your hardware must
also be capable of delivering the video
and sound: if your computer does not
have a sound card, then the audio file
will not play. If you want to hear
good quality sound, you need external
speakers.
A movie will usually
be delivered in an MPEG format - the
movie file will have an .mpg file extension.
A major exception to this is MACROMEDIA
FLASH, which uses it own software environment
to deliver sound and moving images.
When you click on
a link to an audio or video file, the
browser knows which piece of software
to call to handle the type of file
being requested. These are sometimes
referred to as browser plug-ins. It
some cases the file can be downloaded
to the hard disk and used off-line.
If you'r working
in a Microsoft Windows environment
you might already have found Windows
Media Player. This will play a wide
variety of media formats such as mp3,
Mpeg, wav, midi, mov or avi.
This makes is a versatile
package and often will be the default
playing for many media files. Find
out more about Windows
Media Player
There are some important
alternatives to Windows Media Play
- these being Apple
QuickTime and Real
Player.
Some media files
are small and can be delivered to the
browser in a short time. Other files
need to be delivered over a longer
period of time and this can require "streaming
media", i.e. they need to be sent
to the browser in a continuous stream
of data.
Here are some links
that will explain about streaming media.
Theres a definition
of media that is streamed across the
Internet on the Wikipedia
web site.
