Hey gang,

Last spring I was fooling around with compressing clips of Hockey East
games (on FSNE) using QuickTime.  The MPEG and Real versions they had
on their site were not that good quality, and I knew I could get better
results at the same file size using QuickTime 4.

Well, to make a long story short, I took a new job this summer, and
have not looked at this in quite a while.  I did however, recently put
the versions of my clips up on the following web page:

http://homepage.mac.com/hockeyeast/video.html

The equivalent official Hockey East site is here:

http://www.hockeyeastonline.com/video.html

If you compare the high quality version (set your QuickTime connection
speed to T1 or better), and the MPEG files, the file size is about the
same (about 700k to 900k each), the frame size is more than four times
as large (320x240 vs. 144x112), and the video and audio quality is MUCH
better.

Even the major sports media sites (ESPN, CNNSI, FoxSports) still use
these older codecs, and post crappy quality media files.  I for one
would like to see our favorite sport get better coverage on the web.

I have tested my page on Windows 95 thru 2000, and Mac OS 8.6 and
higher.  I'm curious to see what people think about the quality and if
anyone has any MAJOR problems viewing these files.

Thanks for listening (or reading as the case may be) and viewing!

Jon


NOTE: Not all of the videos are available in the QuickTime format.
Only about a dozen or so.  I did not start recording the games for this
purpose until late in the season, and the free site from Apple only
gives me about 20MB.  I could pay for more, but we'll see. ;-)

ALSO NOTE: QuickTime 4.0 requires a Pentium-class processor with at
least 16MB RAM, Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0 or 2000, and a
SoundBlaster-compatible sound card and speakers. DirectX 3.0 is also
recommended. Macintosh based personal computers will need a PowerPC
processor, 16MB RAM and System 7.5.5 or later.

Oh, and I almost forgot......

M  -  A  -  I  -  N  -  E  .............. Gooooooooo BLUE!