What do you need to make a movie file?

Unfortunately, making movie files on your own can be rather expensive. Usually, you need special equipment for your computer…and a LOT of room on your hard drive.

.AVI and .MOV files can be created using video capture boards. These are hardware cards that are installed in your computer that can take input from a video camera or a VCR and make them into movie files. Video capture boards may cost around $200-$500 dollars, depending on the quality and capabilities of the card. Some newer video cards have video capture capability built into them; check with your local computer dealer to see if this feature is available. Some of them also do real-time MPEG captures as well.

ASF and RM files can also be created by video capture cards, but require separate software. This software can also convert AVI and MOV files to ASF or RM files. To create ASF files, you will need Microsoft's free Media Encoder (available from the Microsoft website; do a search for "Windows Media Technologies") To create RM files, you will need RealProducer, which can be found on the Real.Com website.

The Bottom Line About Movie Files

Unless your site is hosted on a VERY fast server AND you expect that every person visiting your page will have a very fast connection:

DON’T DO IT!!

Most video files are absurdly large and take forever to download through a standard modem (even 56K’s). If you must include a video file on your page, it's highly recommended that you link the file rather than embedding it...that way the user can choose whether or not to view the file.