Unit 62: Assignment 1 enzine

An Idiot’s guide to applications and technology used in digital videos on the web.

Do you want to learn more about technology used in videos? If so, then you’re in luck! In this blog I will help you learn about the applications used in digital videos on the web. By the end of this you will know much more about how videos are put onto the web and what technology is used. And you’ll be a digital video expert!


These days whenever you’re on the internet you’re bound to see at least one video, intentionally or unintentionally (so when they pop up out of nowhere). Wherever you go on the internet, there are videos, either embedded or streamed. Digital videos could be used for promotional materials are used to present information to consumers as well as others, increase demands and to differentiate a product. Film trailers are used to promote the film and to get more viewers to see the film. Adverting is used to promote a product that the company is trying to sell, either by YouTube and pop-ups. Viral marketing and e-learning is when games normally embedded into a webpage are used to help a child learn through technology. They are either made by companies to promote there product or user-generated content which is where the videos are made by normal people.


YouTube is a website that people use world wide, it is free easy advertising. The videos are made by both professionals companies and are user-generated. Companies use the professional videos to promote their products, and user-generated videos can be of people doing anything e.g. singing, people falling over, make up tips, making funny videos, animals and sometimes the videos can even go viral like “Charlie bit my finger”. The dictionary definition of a viral video is: “a video that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email.” YouTube is a website filled with streaming videos, instead of embedded videos onto the web page. This is so there is more space on the website and it is not overloading the storage space, YouTube, has got hundreds of videos added onto it very day; now imagine all the storage space you would need on there, if all the videos were embedded. Yeah a lot that’s what I thought!

When you watch a video on the internet they are mostly streamed instead of embedded into the web pages, this is so there is more space on the website and it is not overloading the storage space.

Let’s say you want to catch up on you’re favourite programmes from a website like 4OD or BBC iplayer or even just going on YouTube, these videos are all streamed form the internet. To stream the videos, compressed audio and video files are sent as a data stream over the internet.The stream sends ahead a few seconds of data which is downloaded on the subscriber’s computer.
It is usually written to temporary storage and disappears after viewing.
A media player places this data automatically in the right order and prepares it for viewing.

You can also know if you’re streaming a video when you see the video buffer, this leans that the video is not ready yet for viewing because it hasn’t got all the data it needs.
So when you stream a video from the internet, now you know how it works.

You might be wondering what a embedded video is by now? Well an embedded video is a video placed within its HTML code. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language (HTML) it is the main markup language for displaying web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser. In simple is makes up all the web page, but just in codes.

So if you were creating a video with an embedded player which can be directly placed onto the webpage.

What is Real Media player and how does it work? 
You could also watch videos on the internet using Real Media Player. Real media player is a software produced for playing of recorded media e.g. videos, music, movies and even games. Real media player retrieves audio, video, text, animation and other media to your desktop faster by using streaming technology.
The media player is compatible with numerous formats/files within the multimedia world, including MP3, MPEG-4. QuickTime, Windows media, and many versions of RealAudio and RealVideo formats.
Real Media Player can play a lot of different file types because it has a lot of codecs. A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal.

Different types of files in Real Media Player.

MP4- MP4 is highly compressed media file format container. Original media is encoded in the MP4 format. While playing, player decodes and gets original data. MP4 is the latest generation of portable entertainment devices which are capable of playing video as well as audio and are generally referred to as MP4 players.

MPEG- MPEG is a file of digital video and audio data that has been so compressed. MPEG is lossless this means that when compressed the video does not lose any of its original quality once opened up again.

MP4- MP4 Lossy, so when compressed and opened again, it loosed its original quality. 

FLV- An FLV is a flash video file isn’t most commonly used for embedded web page videos, you would mostly find them on instructional websites like this onehttp://www.origami-instructions.com/.

You have now learnt all there is to know about how digital videos are put onto the web and what technology and applications are used to do so. I hope this has helped you understand how digital videos work on the web and that now you can apply the knowledge I have given you to the world of Digital Videos.