"Please right click and save to disk"

[kmikami]

Why do people say this? Whether I click on a .mov file and view it in my browser or download it to my computer I'm downloading the exact same data from the server. The file isn't suddenly smaller if I download it!

 

[shaftbond]

it's so if you want to watch it over and over (which most of us do ) you aren't continually streaming from their server (once it's deleted out of your cache)

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

It's a habit I think, Not everyone has quicktime pro and on top of that not everyone realizes that you can right click and save as (Or ctrl + click and save as).
I'm sure the people at Reduser.net aren't that stupid but I think it's just force of habit.

 

[kmikami]

it's so if you want to watch it over and over (which most of us do ) you aren't continually streaming from their server (once it's deleted out of your cache)

Aha, so people are assuming that their clips are so great that I'm going to want to watch them again and again day after day. :sarcasm:

But you can watch it over and over in your browser. Nobody is streaming the clips, they're all progressive downloads. And if I see a clip and it's so great that I want to watch it again I can choose to download it after I've viewed it once in the browser and it won't re-download it since it's already cached.

 

[jbeale]

Aha, so people are assuming that their clips are so great that I'm going to want to watch them again and again day after day. :sarcasm: But you can watch it over and over in your browser. Nobody is streaming the clips, they're all progressive downloads. And if I see a clip and it's so great that I want to watch it again I can choose to download it after I've viewed it once in the browser and it won't re-download it since it's already cached.

so, you must be new here . The cinematography is not the point of these early shots, many people are reviewing and scrutinizing these clips for technical details. It turns out that not all player/browser combos will save a file without re-downloading it.

 

[Jean Déraps]

Kmikami, those posting clips here are doing you/us a favour sometimes using up lots of private bandwidth to do so. If they ask you to right click and download the clip, perhaps you should just be so kind and follow their instructions...

 

[kmikami]

The cinematography is not the point of these early shots, many people are reviewing and scrutinizing these clips for technical details.

I realize that of course, and if I'm going to look at a file over and over I obviously download it. I was just wondering where this misconception comes from that doing a save-as somehow saves bandwidth over simply watching the clip in your browser since I see so many people repeating it all over the web. I didn't mean to offend.

BTW, please print this post out and read it offline. It will help save electricity :tongue: .

 

[Pig]

Well, kmikami,
I always wondered the same thing, so you don't have to feel awkward about this question. I know exactly what you mean.
I think the main misconception might be, that these clips are streamed MOV files, which of course they are not.

As long as the QT file has an embedded FAST START flag (which most add) it will luckily play right away.

Although I have not scientifically studied this, I would guess that OVERALL, the bandwidth usage between right-click & save, vs. watching it in one's browser is negligable.
Mainly because one might not watch the whole clip all thge way, and hence not use up the complete clip's file size bandwidth; whereas one would have to download the complete clip in order to watch it from HD.

As correctly stated though: in this particular forum there's a hunger for clips/footage, and this elaborate explanation of mine that preceded this paragraph, might not hold true for REDUSER.
:shifty:

 

[kmikami]

Mainly because one might not watch the whole clip all thge way, and hence not use up the complete clip's file size bandwidth;

Good point! I've certainly done that before. So in fact by viewing in-browser I have sometimes saved bandwidth.

 

[Pete Horvath]

But often the person hosting the file will remove it after a set period of time and if you clear your browser cache regularly it will be gone and no longer accessable.

 

[Rob Lohman]

it won't re-download it since it's already cached.

Your cache has a limited size. Seeing how you can already download over a gigabyte (probably 2) of footage it's likely this won't fit in your cache.

Just download it and if you don't want to keep it around delete it again.

 

[Desert Rune]

Power users Option-click.

 

[kmikami]

Your cache has a limited size. Seeing how you can already download over a gigabyte (probably 2) of footage it's likely this won't fit in your cache.

That makes sense. Sort of. If I have a quicktime movie loaded into my browser that's too big to fit in the cache, where is it? The first half of the file isn't thrown away in order to load the last half of the file (it's not streaming) so obviously it's in memory somewhere. If I click on a large trailer on the Apple site and it takes a while to load in, when it's finished I can simply do a "save as quicktime movie" and it saves it to my hard drive instantly because it has already downloaded.

I ask these questions not to be a pest but because I'm genuinely curious as to how this works and it is something that I've been wondering about for a while.

 

[Steve Freebairn]

In quicktime preferences you can also tell it how much cache it can use on your system. And for the record, if you're watching quicktime trailers in HD, you better have enough ram that it can play from the cache since most of them are under 200 mb

 

[Rob Lohman]

That makes sense. Sort of. If I have a quicktime movie loaded into my browser that's too big to fit in the cache, where is it? The first half of the file isn't thrown away in order to load the last half of the file (it's not streaming) so obviously it's in memory somewhere. If I click on a large trailer on the Apple site and it takes a while to load in, when it's finished I can simply do a "save as quicktime movie" and it saves it to my hard drive instantly because it has already downloaded.

Yes, it will download it fully to it's cache. But it might not *stay* there when you download a new clip or have rebooted the computer etc.

Obviously if you do a "save as quicktime movie" then it's almost the same as downloading it from the get go. The only difference is that you're using twice as much space in your case.