Steaming Media:-
Streaming media is video or audio or both transmitted over a
computer network for immediate play. You don’t to first download the file and
then it play. The Example of streaming video and audio include Internet radio
and television broadcasts, and corporate webcasts.
Streaming Video came about mainly due to the
limitations of dialup Internet connections being too slow to show video. Back
in the days before cable or broadband access, if you wanted to watch a video,
you had to download the entire video before you could watch it and on a 56k modem that would take forever! So the technical bods created a technology called "streaming."
Here's Wikipedia's definition:
" ... multimedia that is continuously received by, and normally displayed to, the end-user while it is being delivered by the provider."
How to use Steaming Media:-
High bandwidth network connections are generally needed to work with
streaming media. Specific bandwidth requirements depend on the type of content.
For example, watching high resolution streaming video requires much more
bandwidth than watching low resolution video or listening to music streams.
To access media streams, users open their audio / video players on
their computer and initiate a connection to a server system. On the Internet,
these media servers can be Web servers or special-purpose devices set up
specifically for high-performance streaming.
The bandwidth (throughput) of a media stream is its bit rate. If the
bit rate being maintained on the network for a given stream drops below the
rate needed to support immediate playback, dropped video frames and/or loss of
sound results. Streaming media systems normally use real-time data compression
technology to lower the amount of bandwidth used on each connection. Some media
streaming systems can also be set up to support Quality of Service (QoS) to
help maintain the necessary performance.
Setting Up computer Networks for
streaming Media
Certain network protocols have been specially developed for streaming
media, including Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP). HTTP can also be used if
the content to be streamed consists of files stored on a Web server. Media
player applications contain built-in support for the necessary protocols so
that users typically do not need to change any settings on their computer to
receive audio / video streams. Examples of media players include:
·
QuickTime
·
RealPlayer
·
Windows Media Player
·
Content providers wanting to deliver streams can
set up a server environment in several different ways:
·
Subscribe to one of the online live streaming
video Web services such as justin.tv or ustream.
·
Build a private Internet media server by
installing specialized commercial software onto a Web server. Examples of media
server software include Real Networks Helix Server and Adobe Flash Media.
·
Buy a commercial hardware/software system for
media streaming. These systems typically interface with broadcast television as
well as the Internet, and they also support higher performance streaming in
many cases.
Steaming Video using Windows Media
In order to use Windows Media for
streaming or downloading video and audio, you need to do three things (unless
you already have a Win Media file ready to go, in which case you only need to
do the last thing):
- Choose a
format
Windows Media has several different file formats (see the links at the bottom of the page). If you're not sure which format to use, WMV is the easiest for video. You may also be limited to the options in your editor, which brings us to... - Create a
video/audio file
The easiest way to create a Windows Media file is to export a file from your favorite editing application. Open the original video clip, then look under File > Export to see what options you have.
For an example of how this works, see Exporting WinMedia from Adobe Premiere. - Place the
files on a web page
This involves entering some HTML code, shown below.
October 17, 2012
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Technology
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