In case you missed the memo, the Internet is live and in motion! Just about every adult site has a video component to it – and most make video the main attraction. If you’re surfing adult sites, or any sites where you can access videos, you will see an array of specifications that you may or may not be familiar with. Understanding things such as video format, compression rates and download speeds will ensure you get what you want out of your online adult entertainment adventures!

Video quality on the Net depends on two factors: the quality of the source video being duplicated and the method used to encode and/or compress it. Source video can come from analog tapes, such as beta, SVHS and VHS or it can come from a number of digital sources as well, such as Digital Betacam or Mini DV tapes. Analogue tapes have many inherent problems. For example, every time a tape is played it loses some of its quality. Also, when an analogue tape is used to copy a master tape, there is additional degradation in quality during the process. The differences between the original and duplicate tape may be hardly noticeable, but there will be a loss of video quality. Analogue tapes also lose quality over time as they sit on shelves, waiting for their next play. There is little anyone can do if a poor quality analogue tape is transferred to digital form. As the old saying goes, crap in leads to crap out.

Digital video provides an answer to this. Assuming you haven’t dropped a hard drive with the video on it, video will appear as clean, crisp and essentially identical every time it’s played. Also, there isn’t any degradation in quality when you copy digital media. Every bit of information is transferred exactly as it’s written so that the copy will appear exactly as the original. Although it is possible for digital tapes and computer disks to lose quality over time, the degradation is nowhere near that of analogue tapes and minor errors can easily be corrected. 1 But although digital technology is far superior to analogue when it comes to weighing the pros and cons of digital video, there are certain downsides that you, as a surfer, are bound to face.

High-resolution video, such as what you see on television, requires large amounts of data to duplicate. Most home users would have very little space left over on their hard drives if they downloaded a handful of full-length movies at their intended resolution. Also, videos of that size, which could take up to nine gigabytes of space, would take an extraordinary amount of time to download – approximately 32 hours with a typical 640k DSL connection. 2 Various ways of encoding and compressing data have been created to solve this problem. We’re going to take a brief look at a handful for the various formats, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they mean to you.

Without getting too technical, there are a number of different video file types that you will see on the web. Microsoft has two that are popular on the web, including .avi (audio video interleave), and .wmv, their Windows Media format. AVI files are common but can’t be played on all non-windows computers while WMV files can be played on just about every computer -- but you need to download an extra component and install it. MPEG videos are also common. MPEG stands for Motion Picture Expert Group and includes .mpeg and .mpg file extensions. These files are generally accepted on all operating systems. Apple developed a video format of its own. It’s called Quicktime and it can be played on their operating system and others, as long as you install a free component. Real Media produced a format that you may come across. Real Media files have .rm and .ram extensions. 3 From a connoisseur’s point of view, each of these formats has different strengths and weaknesses. However, for the layman, most can be tweaked so that video quality can be improved or reduced, so no one file type will always appear better than another.

When a content producer is looking to crunch video, they can reduce the size by various means. What has emerged is a technical way to describe the quality of video without directly relating to the source itself. For example, you may go to a site and see a trailer for download that comes in a few different forms. Your trailer may be a .mov Quicktime file that you can download to your desktop and you may have three choices, a 56k option, 300k and 500k. The “k” refers to kilobits per second or a thousand bits per second. Broadcast quality video may be somewhere around 200 Mbps, if you were to record it at full quality, so most video files will only be shadows of their original selves. 4 (Mbps stands for millions of bits per second or megabits per second and although videos of this size are much better quality, you probably won’t find many of them online) Kbps and mbps simply refer to how much information was retained from the original source – not the size of the file. Generally speaking, the higher the “k,” the better quality of video. But remember, if the video that is being recorded is of poor quality, the file that is eventually made will also be of poor quality, no matter what the “k” happens to be.

The final factor to consider is the rate at which a video is downloaded. Speed is everything -- especially in adult where the need for gratification usually requires immediate solutions. A 200-megabyte file takes ten times as long to download as a 20-megabyte file. Do you really have enough time to wait around for it to be downloaded? You just might, but understanding transfer rates will help you determine whether you should download a full movie, for example, or just a few of the scenes that may be available. First you need to look at your connection. You may be running something like a 56k dial-up modem or you could have a 1.5 DSL connection. There are many options above, below and in between the two mentioned, but what we’re looking at here is the machinery that lets you connect to the Internet and its abilities. Also, you may have a great cable modem attached to your computer, but if there isn’t sufficient infrastructure in your neighborhood, you may not be able to maximize the speed of your hardware. If you’re interested in looking at video files over the Internet, we suggest going for a high-speed connection. Hopefully your local Internet service provider will be able to give you the bandwidth you need to download videos adequately. If you’re looking to get an idea of how long a video will take to download based on your connection, you can try this download speed calculator.

Now you’re armed with a bit of knowledge that should help you navigate the world of online adult entertainment a little easier. Check out your favorite niche and enjoy the show!

References

1. “The Little Digital Video Book” Nonlinear4, Nonlinear4.com, 14 Jan 2006.
2. “Martindale's 'The Reference Desk': Download Time Calculator” Martindale's 'The Reference Desk', Martindalecenter.com, 14 Jan 2006
3. “Multimedia Video Formats” W3 Schools, W3schools.com, 14 Jan 2006
4. “Video Coding: MVQ Compression” VTT, vtt.fi, 14 Jan. 2006.