Fast Start movies are created
automatically when you
save a new movie in QuickTime 3 or
later. |
With Fast Start, your audience
downloads an entire QuickTime movie at the highest data rate their
connections can support. As soon as the initial part of the movie has been
downloaded, QuickTime Plug-in begins to play it back in the browser while
it continues to download the rest. Your audience is left with a complete
movie file that they can save and replay as often as they want. No special
streaming software on the server is needed; all you have to do is create a
Fast Start movie (which you can do using QuickTime Player) and embed it in
a web page.
A Fast Start movie can start playing long before the
whole file has downloaded--typically within a few seconds of starting the
file transfer. If the net connection is faster than the movie’s data rate,
the movie plays smoothly as it arrives, with no waiting. It’s an optimal
experience for the audience.
A Fast Start movie can also include
pointers to data located in other files on the web server, a local disk or
CD, or any web URL. |
 |
| Preparing your
movie for Fast Start |
| Preparing movies
for Fast Start delivery is simple. |
| • In QuickTime 3
and later, movies are normally saved with the Fast Start feature
turned on. Usually it’s best to make the movie
self-contained. |
| • Turn older
QuickTime movies into Fast Start movies by opening them in QuickTime
Player, choosing Save As from the File menu, and saving under a new
name. |
| • Fast Start
movies should always have the .mov file extension, so that the web
server knows what they are. |
| • Fast Start
movies, like other movies, should be compressed to download in a
reasonable length of time. If you are compressing with Terran’s
Cleaner 5, we recommend using Sorenson video compression set to
two-pass variable bit rate (VBR). |
| • Deliver Fast
Start movies by embedding them in a web page. No special HTML is
required beyond the <EMBED> tag. As long as your audience has
a modern browser and a recent version of the QuickTime plug-in, they
will receive the Fast Start
experience. | |
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