Short-film and TV-style websites like to use "streaming media", which means the movie starts within 20 or 30 seconds of clicking the icon or hot-link to display it.
The advantage is that you can start watching a video without having to download the whole thing, which could take 10 or 20 minutes.
The main disadvantage of streaming a film or video clip is that it will inevitably suffer from a slow frame rate, gaps (dropouts) and image corruption due to Network congestion and delays.
It will also be small, because a small image requires less data - and therefore less bandwidth - than a large one.
Websites often offer a choice of 56K and 28.8K videos for different modem speeds. The smaller 28.8K version needs less bandwidth and will usually stream better.
An alternative is to download films to your hard drive and play them back later. This avoids Network congestion and bandwidth limitations, though bigger and better images still mean a bigger file download.
An advantage of downloading films is that, once saved to disk, you can play them as often as you like, or "burn" them onto a CD for long-term storage.
However, it's annoying to download a 10MB or larger movie file, find you don't like it, and delete it after watching the first few seconds.
Surfers with broadband (high bandwidth) Internet connections such as ADSL and cable modems should get good results with streaming video. Those with dial-up modem connections will get better results by downloading files.
Downloading files can take some time, so it helps to have a free or flat-rate Internet connection, even if the "free" periods are only in the evening and/or at weekends.
However, it's also essential to have Headlight Software's GetRight (www.getright.com) or a similar utility, which can be downloaded from the Net.
In the Web's early days, if the phone connection was dropped (or often if it wasn't) a file download would stop, and you'd have to start again from the beginning.
For maximum aggravation, downloads usually stopped when 9095 per cent complete. However, GetRight can automatically redial and resume a broken download.
You can also run it in the background and download a file over several sessions, when you happen to be on the Web for other purposes. This is a very efficient use of bandwidth and should make short films available to all but the most parsimonious users.
To play back a movie you also need player software, which is usually free.
RealNetworks' RealVideo (www.realNetworks.com) is probably essential - Mr Michael Cornish of Atomfilms reckons it has about 85 per cent of the streaming video market - with Macromedia's Shockwave Flash (www.macromedia.com) for cartoons.
Microsoft's Windows Media Player supports a wide range of streaming and playback formats such as .avi, .asf, .mpg, .mpeg, .mp2 and .mp3, including Apple's QuickTime (.qt, .mov etc), though you may also want Apple's own player. (Yes, there is a Microsoft Windows Media Player for Macintosh.) Media sites usually provide links to sites where visitors can download any player.
