Rev 4 Preview Webinar - Video Link

[Bill Marriott]

Michael,

> Really?

Really.

> I think you should forego foisting MS POS formats on everyone and
> use mp4 for distribution instead. I can explain how if necessary.

Be my guest. We've already spent dozens of hours trying to work around this.

The GoToWebinar software we use for our webinars records *only* in WMV --  
our choices are WMV that uses a special GoToWebinar codec that works only on 
Windows, and requires installation of the GoToWebinar software; or a 
cross-platform, portable WMV. Every option we have tried to transcode such 
files has resulted in, at the minimum, a file size of twice as large, and a 
loss in quality (such as what you would get converting a WMA file to MP3). 
For example, we had to recode an earlier webinar because of a glitch and the 
file size went from 50MB to 140MB after our best efforts.

Some people have suggested we use a second computer to capture the video 
using different screen recording software, but this is also sub-optimal as 
a) the second computer is capturing compressed audio/video as a "guest" of 
the conference, not capturing the source screens; b) the GoToWebinar 
software captures the screens at a consistent resolution, without needing to 
worry about resetting the capture rect as we change presenters and other 
details; c) the other programs often require installation of a special 
codec, themselves.

Note also that you said you prefer mp4, as if this were a universal format. 
But most Windows users cannot view that format, without having QuickTime or 
other additional software installed, and we wouldn't want to "foist" 
anything on them. Plus WMV is a "progressive download" that starts to play 
fairly quickly, as opposed to requiring the whole file to be downloaded.

So, if you've got an idea that doesn't have these downsides, let me know.

- Bill