Bandwidth

[Charles Martin]

> From: Rick Banuelos <teasethedog at mac.com>
> I am building a website for my upcoming film. I'm going to have clips
> of the film available for download- 3 one to two minute clips, and a
> one-minute trailer. I'm planning on having the clips in quicktime, and
> somewhat highly compressed. I'm pretty familiar with how much online
> storage space I'll need, but I don't know how much bandwidth to buy for
> something like this. Any suggestions?

There's absolutely no way in advance to calculate this. Too many 
variables. For example, if your clips feature and female breasts you 
should plan on at least 10 times the bandwidth a non-breast clip would 
get. :)

Also we don't know how extensively the site will be publicized or who's 
linking to it/driving traffic that way, etc.

You should be aware that you don't have compress the clips as much as 
you may think. Thanks to Quicktime's streaming technology in versions 5 
and particularly 6, even a HUGE clip can be seen at dialup speeds. The 
trick is not to compress the picture quality, but to make a "reference 
movie" (a very tiny file that senses what speed the viewer is working 
with) which automagically points to either a highly-compressed, 
small-pic version of the clip (for dialup) or a less-compressed, nicer 
and larger version (for broadband).

Let's say for argument's sake that the sum total of these clips is 
60MB, divided equally. If all your visitors average watching at least 
two of the clips all the way through, and you get 100 visitors a day, 
that's 40MBx100 = 4GB daily.

Your best bet would be to talk with your bandwidth provider and make 
arrangements for them to set a bandwidth limit and CLOSE the site 
temporarily if the bandwidth is exceeded (with a notice to try back 
later). Otherwise, they will happily serve up all the visitors you can 
handle but will bill YOU for the "surprise" bandwidth, and this can 
hurt BIG TIME -- remember back in the 80s when the only way to run up 
an $1000 phone bill was to call phone-sex services? Hah!

_Chas_
Come to  ... The CHASbah!
http://thechasbah.blogspot.com
http://filmmoi.blogspot.com

"Best Documentary EVER," Assoc. of Documentary Filmmakers: 
http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com