We offer video clips in three different formats: Windows Media, Quicktime, and And Real Player. If you are using Internet Explorer, the videos should just start to play once they have downloaded to your browser even if you do not have a media player downloaded on your computer.

If you are not seeing graphics and video, your web browser might not be equipped to show Java rich media. Please visit Clipstream.com/help to learn how to enable your client for rich media. *** NOTE: With some old video card drivers, Java VM may respond poorly if the video card is set to 32bit color. If the browser freezes when loading a web page or if video playback is jerky, try changing the color depth to 16 bit.

To download Windows Media Player. To download Quicktime player. Many playback issues can be resolved by using the latest version of either player.

The video clips will have to be downloaded to your computer first before they will play. This happens automatically once you click on the link. Your computer will start downloading the video, but then it will have to decide which player to use. We have chosen this approach to give the highest possible quality video for the widest possible audience.

If you connect to the Internet with a dial-up connection, each video clip can take several minutes (up to five minutes) to download. Please be patient, it's worth the wait! Each video clip is around 35 meg and plays about 3 minutes. It might speed up the process if you opened your player program before clicking on the video link. Some computers have a hard time deciding which player to use if you don't open one ahead of time and thus delays loading.

Which Player?

If you're not sure which player to choose, just try one and see if it works - you won't hurt your computer. Chances are at least one of the players will work without you having to download a new player.

Each player has it's own strengths and weaknesses, but they have roughly the same audio and video quality. Our Internet Explorer, RealPlayer, Windows Media and Quicktime video clips are all the same length.

Troubleshooting . . .

If no video plays after clicking on our links, you likely need to download one of the video players. Once you have installed a player then go back and choose the video clip again.

Each video player has a help menu that will lead you to information on many issues.

I have a player but the video still won't work . . .

Ideally, once you click on a video clip link the video should download and play automatically...if it doesn't, you might have to do a search (Find File) and find where the video clip file was saved on your computer (e.g. in the 'My Documents' folder) and then double-click on the video file, just as if you were opening a Word document. If you have trouble finding the video clip you downloaded, try searching your computer for a word in the title of our video clips, e.g. "fastmpg" or "bluesmpg" or "KIDDBILLY2".

Another issue may be that you have an older version of the video player and our videos require a newer version. So if you are certain that your video player matches the video format you have downloaded, you may need to download a newer version of the player.

The videos play but don't sound good or look good . . .

Two suggestions here: try downloading the video clip again and/or downloading the latest version of the video player. Technical support for each video player should be available on the respective web sites.

If the videos stop intermittently or freeze during playback it could be due to a shortage of available memory. Closing other active/open applications can free up memory to make the video players work more smoothly.