[kidtexas]

I feel like an asshat asking this, but I'm having some problems and figured I might as well ask.

I've got a video in FCP5. I used Compressor to make an mpeg4 .mov out of it (the Compressor preset was Quicktime 6 streaming file at 300kbs). I loaded that onto my website and when you click the link to it, it loads up in the browser and starts playing almost immediately, before the download is finished. Great. This is what I want.

My problem lies in the fact that I want the same behavior with a clip encoded in h.264. Figuring the process was the same, I exported a version of the movie (from the same source) in Compressor using the Quicktime 7 streaming preset (300kbs). This makes a beautiful h.264 .mov that once uploaded onto my webhost, does not play progressively as it downloads. When one clicks on the link, the big quicktime Q sits in the middle of the page, and the clip doesn't appear until the whole thing is downloaded.

I tried exporting the original DV clip in Quicktime Pro. I selected the Movie to Quicktime Movie setting with the Streaming - Medium preset. It also gave me a beautiful h.264 .mov that had the same problems.

I can't figure out what's going on. The initial thought was that it was my webserver, but you would think it was treating .mov's containing h.264 or mpeg4 the same. Maybe that is really the problem. I don't know.

Hope this is understandable and that some one can help me out.

Here's links to the 2 versions of the video:
mpeg 4:
http://www.protozoic.com/video/ygb6.mov

h.264:
http://www.protozoic.com/video/ygb7.mov

[mduell]

Apple's movie trailers site has a similar quirk: regular trailers play in the browser window as soon as you click them, but H.264 trailers launch the QuickTime program and play outside the brower.

[kidtexas]

Actually, that would be fine by me. That has to do with the way the movie is coded into the html. I'm sure Apple's h.264 movies start playing almost instantly though - that is what isn't working for me.

[grovberg]

Just to clarify, are you checking the Prepare for Internet Streaming option? Fast start should do what you want and may not be turned on by default.