Okay, so I’ve never used Wowza before but I’m interested in buying a license because I’ve had issues with JW Player. One of the issues that I have with JW Player is that if a video file is located on another server, then the file can only be streamed; you can’t skip to different parts.
So, for instance if it’s an hour long video and the viewer wants to skip to 40 minutes in, they can’t do that, they’d have to sit there for 40 minutes until it gets to the part that they want. If the video is located on my server, or the server that the JW player files are located on then the viewer can skip to different parts. I was told that this is an issue with JW player.
Does Wowza do the same thing, or can I skip to whatever part of the video that I want even if the file is located on another server?
I don’t think that you were doing streaming in your initial setup. To be able to do streaming, you will need a streaming server. Based on your description, I think that you have a http server which serves simple media files. In this case, most probably, you were doing progressive download. Until the file gets downloaded on you local machine, you won’t be able to skip forward, because the player won’t be able to play content that hasn’t been downloaded yet.
Using Wowza, since it’s a streaming server, you would be able to skip forward. Also you can still keep using JW Player, because it isn’t a player problem, it’s a problem with the method (download and not streaming) you are using to server your content.
After you install Wowza on your server, since you have never used before, in order to configure and use it properly, I strongly recommend to go through our User’s Guide. Also we have lots of useful articled on our forum, but you can start with the Quick Start Guide and the tutorials we have available.