Category:Web Video
"Computer —Poppy, "I'm Poppy" (song)
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Web Video is the providing of Television or sometimes drawings or animation over the Internet, typically in a web browser. Almost all sites are supported by advertising, but as with other sites, a very tiny number operate on a subscription basis (usually because they offer porn, that being about the only thing you can get people to pay for.) Some only allow you to watch while on-line, others will let you download the video to watch later or when not connected to the Internet.
Providing video over the Web was an issue once plagued by a need for multiple proprietary plug-ins, some of which worked better than others, but the duty of playing video has now mostly passed to a single plug-in, Adobe's Flash Player, a method popularized by YouTube. The video "player" is actually a Flash file (whereas before it would be part of the plug-in), usually custom designed and coded by someone on the site's development team. It contains the DVD-like controls and also handles the way the video is sent to the browser. Unfortunately, this puts the burden of making a working player on the site developers, and some do not know how to do it correctly.
There are basically two types of Web Video sites, those that do it right, and those that don't. Actually there are probably three types: those that offer non-porn and do it right, those that offer non-porn and don't do it right, and those that offer porn, and do it right. Those that offer porn and don't do it right usually don't get people (e.g. paying customers) to stick around and thus they go bankrupt, so those sites tend not to last long.
One of the most important features is the ability to go forward in a video (to skip uninteresting or boring parts), but even more important is the caching of video. The Internet isn't always smooth delivery; sometimes you get a slow connection or the site gets hit by a lot of traffic. So the video is generally sent such that it runs a few seconds behind the image so that if it hits a slow signal, it can ride through it without the video jerking to a stop while it waits for more material to be sent. This process of sending video faster than you watch it is referred to as "caching" or "buffering." Most sites, in fact, continue to send the video even if you hit the 'pause' button, so that if your connection is slower than the speed of the video, you can pause the video, go away and do something else, and come back and eventually have all of the video available. Consider the idea of filling a large bucket from a (very) slow faucet; you might turn it on, walk away and come back later while the bucket fills, as opposed to using the water a little at a time.
A clear and obvious indication of a place that does not do it right is a player that does not cache. This means, if your Internet connection isn't absolutely flawless, video presentation is not going to work, and the video will operate on the basis of: play (for about a second or two); jerk stop and freeze with a spinning cursor, wait about 5-10 seconds for the signal to catch up; play a couple seconds; jerk; stop; play; jerk; play; etc. (If you've ever seen someone who's learning how to drive and doesn't yet know how to use the brake correctly, you'll get the idea.) Other sites do not use the buffer effectively; the player will show a growing bar showing how much of the video is loaded, with the spot you're currently watching a good distance behind, yet the video will still halt every few seconds to buffer some more, defeating the purpose of having a buffer in the first place.
If they're really stupid, they'll simply drop the frames that don't show up, so you get a second of video, then after four or five seconds when the feed catches up, the video skips forward 4 seconds, runs for a second or two, stalls, then resumes at that point a few seconds later in the video, dropping the part that couldn't keep up. This might be understandable if you were watching live streaming video, but we're talking about stored video being sent from a server; this sort of practice is not just bad, it's inexcusably bad.
Worse, some of the sites that don't cache, if you pause the video in order to wait for it to catch up, terminate the connection for waiting too long. Now you have to start the entire video over from the beginning.
Web video comes from two major sources: Those that provide their own content (such as those run by TV Networks), and those that provide content uploaded by users. The latter almost all have good players, since unlike the TV networks they can't afford not to. The biggest of these is YouTube, launched in 2005, and similar sites including Vimeo and Dailymotion have sprung up since. But they don't allow porn. For that, there various are pay and free sites dedicated to that purpose. But you get what you pay for.
HTML 5's <video> tag allows video files to be played directly without the use of Flash Player or other third-party plugins. The browser itself handles caching, and the controls can be customized to some extent, the same way one customizes the look of the page itself. However, there is no agreement as to which format is supported in various browsers - as of 2019, no format is supported in all browsers without plugins. The proprietary "H.264" version of the MP4 format comes closest to universal support.
Pages in category "Web Video"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 416 total.
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A
- Adrian Gray Comedy
- The Adventures of Feelgood and Longbottom
- Agamemnon Tiberius Vacuum
- Agents of Cracked
- Alex Jones
- Aliento
- Allan's Championship Wrestling League
- Alternate Reality DBZ
- The Amazing Atheist
- Angry German Kid
- The Angry Joe Show
- The Angry Video Game Nerd
- The Annotated Series
- The Annoying Orange
- Apple of Our Eye
- ASCZ's Horrorshow
- The Asexuality Chronicles
- Ask a Ninja
- Ask That Guy With The Glasses
- The Masochist Masculist
- Assist Me
- Atop the Fourth Wall
- Avatar: The Abridged Series
- Awesome Video Games
- Aydin Paladin
- Azuritereaction
B
- Bad Movie Beatdown
- Ball Grill Police
- Battle for Dream Island
- Ben Drowned
- Bennett the Sage
- Benzaie
- Bigal2k6
- Bill wurtz
- Billy Coore
- Billy Green
- Bite Me (web video)
- Blacktail Defense
- The Blockbuster Buster
- Blueluigi
- Botchamania
- The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)
- Bro Team Pill
- Brows Held High
- Bum Reviews
C
- CAPTAIN YAJIMA
- CaughtNotSleeping
- Celebrity Bric-a-Brac Theater
- The Cheap-Arse Film Review
- The Church of Blow
- The Cinema Snob
- Cinematic Titanic
- A Civil War game? Surely you can't be serious
- Classic Game Room
- Comics Are Awesome
- Computer and Spaceman
- Confused Matthew
- Conlang Critic
- Corridor Digital
- Counter Monkey
- Coyle Command
- Crank Lucas
- Crash Course (web video)
- Cup of Destiny
- Custom Idiots
D
- The Daly Show
- Dark Harvest
- DarksydePhil
- A Day at Last Chance
- The Dead Are Watching
- Dead Island Origins
- Death Battle
- Death Note Abridged (Dogface 701)
- Death Note Abridged (HikariPop)
- Death Note Abridged (StackedSugarCubes)
- Death Note Abridged (Tio H and Dargonakis)
- Death Note Temporary Insanity
- Death Note the Abridged Series (Cheftoni FTW)
- Death Note the Abridged Series (kpts4tv)
- Death Note the Abridged Series (Team Dattebayo)
- Death Note: The Abridged Series (1KidsEntertainment)
- The Defrosters
- Demyx Time
- Diamanda Hagan
- Dimension 20
- Doom Day
- Doppelganger (web video)
- Doug Derky
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged
- Dragon Cave
- The Dropped Camera
E
F
G
- G Gundam Abridged
- Game Chap
- The Game Fucking Fuck Fuck Fucker Fucking Fuck Fucker
- Game Grumps
- The Game Station
- Gay Comic Geek
- Geek Therapy
- Girl Number 9
- Golden Book Video Killers
- The Grand Galloping Collab
- Grand Theft Auto: Escanaba
- GrayStillPlays
- The Guild
- Gundam Wing: The Abridged Series
- Guru Larry and Wez
H
- H3h3 Productions
- Harry Potter and The Dark Lord Waldemart
- Hbomberguy
- Heart of Gaming
- Hellsing Abridged
- Hewy's Animated Movie Reviews
- History Buffs
- History of Power Rangers
- Hitler Rants
- Holy Musical Batman
- The Hooker with a Heart of Gold
- How to Play Brawl Like A Man
- Human Centipede the Musical
- The Hungry Syrian Wanderer
I
- I Made America
- I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
- I'm a Marvel... and I'm a DC
- If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device
- Inanimate Insanity
- Incognito Cinema Warriors XP
- Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik
- Internet Killed Television
- Internet Personality Vangelus
- The Irate Gamer
- Iron Liz
- Is It a Good Idea to Microwave This?
- Italian Spiderman
J
K
L
- Laci Green
- The Last Angry Geek
- Lazy Game Reviews
- The League of STEAM
- Lee and Dena
- Leeroy Jenkins Video
- The Legend of Zelda: The Sage of Darkness
- Lenny and Shinko's Disney-See
- LG15: The Last
- LG15: the resistance
- Lindybeige
- Liquid Snake Explains BIG CHUNGUS
- LittleJayneyCakes
- Lonelygirl15
- Loose Change
- Lord of the Weed
- Lost Pause
- Love Hina Abridged
- Luke Mochrie and The Inners