video: streaming vs progressive download

Question

I'm not a Flash developer, so please try to keep answers simple! (Currently looking for developer if anyone wants to contact me.)

I'm trying to decide whether, for my particular application, I would be better off delivering video via streaming or progressive download. Here's the situation:

Background: this will be a learning drill for learning foreign language phrases. There will be a series of ten short video clips, each one a headshot of a native speaker, saying a single sentence. The background is static so the only thing changing will be facial expressions, so compression should be pretty effective. Each clip will be approximately 4-6 seconds total length. Resolution will be approximately 360 X 270.

The way this particular drill works makes me wonder if perhaps progressive downloading might make more sense than streaming. But like I said, I'm not a Flash developer, so I could easily be wrong. (Did I mention we're currently looking for a talented, reliable Flash developer?) So here's how it will work:

Drill will load up showing written text of instructions, along with audio of the narrator reading the instructions aloud. Approximate length of the audio instructions will be 15 seconds. (I"m thinking progressive download could begin during the reading of the instructions.)

After the instructions have been read, the intructional text goes away and is replaced with (from top to bottom) the text for the first sentence, the video box with a static image of the first frame, a "Begin" button.

When the user clicks the "Begin" button, the video begins to play, and the "Begin" button transforms into a "Repeat" button, which is inactive while the video plays.

When the video ends, the "Repeat" button becomes active. Clicking the "Repeat Button" causes the same video clip to play a second time (again, the "Repeat" button is inactive while video plays.

This happens again, for a total of three plays of the same short video clip, with a user-controlled pause in between. (Bear in mind that a progressive download of the remaining nine video clips could be taking place while the user works his way through the three repetitions of the first video clip.)

After the third repetition of the first video clip, the "Repeat" button transforms into a "Next" button. Clicking the "Next" button initiates an identical process for video clip #2. This process continues through video clip #10, at which point the user can click to record his progress.

I would appreciate guidance as to whether streaming or progressive download would be more appropriate in this situation, and also would like to hear from anybody interested in working on this.

Thanks,

Anonymous · Answer

Either solution would be equally appropriate, so I suppose the decision would come down to a few other factors:

1. Do you need to protect the video in such a way that it is not easily downloaded or otherwise saved to the user's machine

2. Do you already have a Flash Media Server license, or would you be purchasing specifically for this project

3. For the data handling portions of your application, do you already have a plan in place (i.e how you'll handle operations like saving the user's progress)

In terms of user experience, those short clips would do fine over progressive download. You'd also do better with progressive in terms of data transfer, as with the streaming solution, you're burning bandwidth on each "repeat", where in the case of progressive, the repeat will be played from the user's local cache.

If you don't need to protect the video from download, and you don't already have an FMS license, I'd go with progressive for this one.

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