Having videos on a site takes up alot of bandwidth. If I make it so that people can only download the videos, then they wouldn't use bandwidth since they would view them on their own computers. My question is how do you do this? I thought about just making a hyperlink target to the zipped video but I don't think it will automatically begin to download.

Any thoughts?

People still have to download the videos and this takes up as much bandwidth as streaming video.

the way to recude bandwidth is to use compressed video such as DIVX or Realvideo

If they download only the file, shouldn't it on use the file size in bandwidth. Is that what you mean? I can see how even that can add up since most videos are like 50 megs, as opposed to a photo that is 80k.

whether you stream it or have your visitor download it thy will take almost the same amount of bandwidth.

Sorry if I misunderstand what you say but I still find your point rather confusing.

There isn't much to do. You can do some tests with the display size (320X240, 120X90, etc), fps (15, 30) and audio (mhz, stero/mono, etc). You can try the diferent types as well (quicktime, divx, etc).
Maybe could be good try some program like "Media CLeaner", programs that make a compression in your movies and have a lot of possibilities of setups in all that I wrote up there...
And streaming or downloading videos takes the same bandwith. It doesn't matter the way that the user is receiving the movie. I believe that the bandwith costs for streaming are more expensive that the for simple downloading.
The way to take the bandwith necessities down is to make the movie in the minimum size possible.
(eeer... sorry for my weak english... :( :eek: if someone wants to correct me or something... Be my Guest! ;) )