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The Basics of Internet Streaming Video by Andrew Alexander Published on Aug 7, 2001 12:00 AM

So you have this idea that you can edit your thirty-minute vacation video and email it to your friends and relatives, or at least post it somewhere on the internet so they can download it. The good news is that it is indeed possible. However, in its native format, digital video takes up a lot of space - 3.6 megabytes per second. On a regular dial-up modem, it would take an internet user eighteen days to download your video! On top of that, they would have to download the whole thing before even being able to see it. So what is an aspiring internet video producer to do?

Enter Streaming video. Streaming video refers to video content that is compressed and encoded so that it is easily downloaded, and plays as soon as you start downloading it. There are various means to accomplishing this task, and as usual, many things you have to consider when you are preparing content that is suitable for "streaming".

Compression and Bandwidth

In order for streaming video to work, the video clip must be compressed so that a user does not have to wait forever to get your content, and that it does not take up loads of space on the hard drive. Compressing a clip means that it is encoded in a way that trades clarity for size. That is, the more a video clip is compressed, the smaller it becomes and the faster it will download, but the quality will degrade proportionately. Streaming video is generally compressed according to a certain bitrate (a value which corresponds to the desired rate of download).

Sample compression schemes

Original project: 10:56 in length
Compressed with Native DV codec (29.97 fps, 720x480 frame size, 3.6 MB/sec):2,361.6 MB
MPEG-4 codec (15 fps, 352x240 frame size, 900 kbps bitrate): 85.3 MB
Windows Media (15 fps, 352x240 frame size, 256 kbps bitrate): 11.7 MB

How it works

The way streaming video works is that a remote site on the internet downloads the compressed video data to the user’s computer, and the data is uncompressed and processed by a video player as it is received. If there is an interruption in the download, the video is paused until the data resumes downloading. However, if the user’s internet connection is not fast enough to keep up with the stream of data, it will not stream at all; the user will have to download the whole thing before playing.

Creating Streaming Content

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
- Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Almost all video files are capable of being streamed; most media player programs have reached a point where they will interpret video data and transform it into something you can watch as it downloads. However, some video files are designed with streaming especially in mind. Three notable examples are RealMedia, Windows Media and Quicktime. These two formats operate along more or less the same principles but have their own particular advantages and disadvantages.

Going into the technical details of how to use these programs is unfortunately outside the scope of this article, but they are all relatively straightforward to use and there are lots of resources on the web to assist you.

Your target audience

When creating streaming content, it is vital to consider the capabilities of your audience. If you know that your average viewer only has a dial-up connection, it’s pointless to encode your content at a high bitrate because your dial-up viewer will not want to spend the time to download your content. At the same time, you may want to tailor your content to a higher-spec audience. Your best bet is to either provide multiple versions of the same file, encoded at different bitrates, or use a multiple bit-rate encoding.

Making your content available on-line

After you get your content ready for streaming, you need a place to put it on the web! If you have your own web space, you are all set - you just need to ensure that it is configured as a streaming server (check with your service provider to verify this). Otherwise, I have accumulated a short list of sites that will host your video content for you, some for free, some at various price schemes.

www.digitalfridge.com
www.popster.com
videoshare.bluemountain.com
www.matrox.tv
www.myvideogreetings.com
www.alwaysontv.com
www.viewcastonline.com
www.eveo.com

Finally, for more information about all things streaming, I recommend you surf over to Streaming Media World.