Getting the little picture

Instead of herding groups of employees into your company's audiovisual department for training, marketing presentations and enterprise-wide speeches, why not deliver the same video content directly to their computers and save thousands of hours of lost productivity? Video server software claims to provide a direct video link between an information source in your company and the desktops of the many employees who need that information. But is the image quality good enough? Will the video stream bring your network to its knees? Does the product support common video standards? Will it work with the computers you already have?

We invited vendors to submit video server software tools you can use to create (or import), edit and distribute streaming video images. The software could be part of a bundled hardware platform or run on a standard server operating system.

We found RealSystem G2, made by RealNetworks, to be the best product for serving up video across a digital network. It gave us nearly everything we wanted: high-quality images, good performance, support for several standards, platform neutrality and easy management. It's also the only product we tested that runs on a Unix platform, though we tested the version that runs on Windows NT. Unfortunately, RealSystem G2 is more expensive than the other products we reviewed.

Apple's QuickTime 4 was no slouch either, but it required a Mac G3 server, which Apple sent us. Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies, bundled with Windows NT Server, worked well in light use with no special security requirements.

InfoValue Computing's QuickVideo Suite, we concluded, is best used for specific vertical market applications, such as corporate training centers, in which general-purpose video streaming isn't a factor. The suite consists of four products: QuickVideo on Demand, a TCP/IP-based video stream server; QuickVideo Multicast, an IP Multicast video server; QuickVideo Archive, a video file organizing tool; and QuickVideo IntraWeb, a browser-based image displayer with caching aids.

Video server software works best with fast network connections. Even with fast client computers to handle the decompression of the video frames, viewing video streams through 28.8K or 33.6K bit/sec modems was somewhat frustrating. All the players left visible artifacts, such as colored squares and stray jagged lines, as well as image residue on the screen at slower modem speeds, and they often dropped considerable detail from the displayed image.

All the streaming video server software products hogged the server CPU, continuously pegging CPU utilization at 100% as they distributed video images over the network. Don't count on using the video server for other purposes, such as Web or file serving.

Managing the broadcast studio

During our initial testing, we immediately noticed these products were designed to work best on IP networks. The products' codecs (see story) made use of IP's connectionless User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to avoid the transport layer's packet monitoring and error correction via retransmission.

Our tests showed RealSystem G2 and QuickVideo Suite to be the fastest servers of video streams across the greatest range of servers and network contention situations. Moreover, the RealSystem G2 codecs impressed us by working well over Ethernet, T-1, DSU/CSU and 56K bit/sec modem connections. In one test, RealSystem G2 was able to display excellent-quality video at 30 frames per second (fps) on high bit-rate content.

QuickTime 4 performed well until we attempted to increase the frame rate to greater than 15 fps. Past that level network traffic began increasing at a high rate, saturating the clients. Windows Media Technologies performed well at slow frame rates on a lightly loaded network. When we asked it to broadcast high-rate video images under adverse network congestion conditions, Windows Media Technologies bogged down severely or ground to a screeching halt. Similarly, QuickTime 4 reacted badly to adverse network congestion, but RealSystems G2 and QuickVideo Suite continued to serve up video, albeit in a degraded fashion.

We found several differences in these products' content creation, editing and administrative features. RealProducer Pro, RealSystem G2's timeline-based video editor component, is a superior tool for editing and managing video streams. Not only did it offer features such as Frame Rate Upsampling, which produced high-quality video even when subjects were moving fairly rapidly or the camera was panning, RealSystem G2 also gave us remote administration via a browser-based interface.

Frame Rate Upsampling uses temporal interpolation to estimate movement between key frames and thus encode and show a smoother, higher-quality image. In our tests, Frame Rate Upsampling actually increased client frame rate. The clients' frame rates suffered dramatically with the other products when we attempted to broadcast images of quickly moving subjects. In one test, we encoded and transmitted a 5-fps stream that clients displayed at nearly 15 fps.

QuickTime 4 Pro, which is QuickTime 4 plus some editing tools, was almost as easy to use and feature-rich as RealSystem G2. Its QuickTime Player module was especially good at embossing, sharpening and tinting the images during an editing session. Both RealSystem G2 and QuickTime 4 Pro did a professional-looking, painless job of annotating image streams with text. Just a few clicks of the mouse let us select fonts, colors and attributes such as smooth scrolling.

Windows Media Technologies' and QuickVideo Suite's video editing tools were unremarkable.

Administration and security

We also found some differences in the products' administration tools. We found RealSystem G2's Java-based remote administration client highly useful. With it, we were able to start and stop the video server, manage all the concurrent audio and video streams, and configure user authentication. QuickTime 4 and QuickVideo Suite don't offer a remote management feature. Windows Media Technologies' remote administration feature gave us less control than RealSystem G2's and required that we use the Internet Explorer browser as well as install an ActiveX component alongside the browser. With its simplistic interface, Windows Media Technologies was easy to administer but didn't offer the breadth of control options we would've liked.

For security, RealSystem G2 employs a user ID and password challenge scheme to identify clients, and it let us set up different viewing authorizations based on directory permissions and various time limits. For example, we easily allotted users access to only certain video streams and limited the length of time a user could view a stream. At our behest, it also encrypted the video streams.

QuickTime 4 lacked security features, while Windows Media Technologies and QuickVideo Suite simply took advantage of whatever underlying NT Server permissions and access control lists we set up. Windows Media Technologies did not even support HTTP digest, a rudimentary but better-than-nothing means of safely transmitting passwords over the Internet. To its credit, Windows Media Technologies comes with a Media Rights Manager that controls the user's ability to make copies of the video stream.

All four products support IP Multicast, a network addressing scheme for sending a single stream of packets to selected, multiple clients. We used the feature to target groups of IP clients with a single broadcast of video material, thus conserving bandwidth. We could even configure RealSystem G2 to use a "back channel" with IP Multicast, which authenticated Multicast clients and let clients ask the server for retransmissions of dropped frames. The result was a higher-quality but slower display in a noisy or highly congested network environment.

Getting on the air

Getting each of the streaming video products up and running involved the installation of both client and server software, meaning we had to visit and configure each client computer before it could receive video input. Configuration consisted mainly of selecting combinations of audio and video compression schemes that matched the type of video stream we were using and the bandwidth of that network segment.

RealSystems includes a wizard module that helps match the type of audio and video for a particular situation (images of people's heads and sounds of voices, for example) with the appropriate codecs. Windows Media Technologies has a similar wizard. Windows Media Technologies also offers more templates (such as "high-motion scalable video" and "presentation scalable video") for varying amounts of bandwidth and different types of video and audio streams than RealSystem G2. However, the extra templates and corresponding number of wizard questions made the administrator's job more complex without significantly improving the viewing experience or reducing network bandwidth. Alternately, you can configure a Windows Media Technologies stream by manually choosing a target bandwidth and codec. QuickTime 4 and QuickVideo Suite didn't offer wizard-based guidance in the configuration of codecs.

With its suite, InfoValue sent us a license-enforcement parallel port dongle that limited concurrent users to 100 and streamed video to 500M bit/sec. We always find dongles an annoyance.

Using these video server software tools is a practical, cost-effective alternative to sending large groups to big-screen audiovisual corporate events. However, streaming video can consume considerable network bandwidth and the image quality is unacceptable when they're used with slow dial-up connections.

Get RealSystem G2 if you make more than occasional use of your company's audiovisual department for video presentations. Microsoft-centric shops with lightly loaded networks and an infrequent need to show video to employees will appreciate the fact that NT Server comes with video server software, and Mac-centric companies will similarly appreciate QuickTime 4's low cost. QuickVideo Suite might be appropriate for an audiovisual department that happens to have its own programming staff.

Nance, a software developer and consultant for 29 years, is the author of Introduction to Networking, 4th Edition (Que, 1997) and Client/Server LAN Programming (Que, 1994). He can be reached at barryn@erols.com.

Video servers at a glance

Note: * = Relies on Windows NT's internal security and access control list (ACL) features
** = Protects video images from theft

How we did it

We installed the OnePoint Operations Manager's Consolidator on a Dell PowerEdge 2300 with 512M bytes of RAM, a 400-MHz Pentium processor and Windows NT Server 4. The server also ran Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, Windows NT Option Pack 4.0, Microsoft Management Console and Microsoft Transaction Server, all of which are required by Operations Manager. We used a Dell Optiplex GX1 running NT Server 4 as our Primary Domain Controller and primary management console. Mission Critical's ActiveAgents were installed on five NT Workstation 4 machines. We used Operations Manager to monitor system performance and analyze event logs.

Scorecard

Note: Individual category scores are based on a scale of 1-10. Percentages are the weight given each category in determining the total score.

NetResults

RealSystem G2
RealNetworks, Inc.
2601 Elliott Ave., Suite 1000
Seattle, Wash. 98121
(800) 444-8011
(206) 674-2700
fax: (206) 674-2699
www.real.com
Starts at $5,995 for 100 concurrent users
Pros: High quality image display; remote administration; good performance
Cons: High price

QuickTime 4 Apple Computer, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, Calif. 95014
(800) 538-9696
(408) 996-1010
fax: (408) 229-0555
www.apple.com/quicktime
$29.99 for Pro version (includes video editing tools)
Pros: Good video editing tools; comes with several video codecs
Cons: Inadequate security; high bandwidth utilization

Windows Media Technologies 4
Microsoft Corp.
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, Wash. 98052
(800) 426-9400
(425) 882-8080
fax (425) 936-7329
www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en
Included in the cost of Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
Pros: Works well in light-duty situations; Media Player uses the CPU frugally
Cons: Slow performance, remote admin required IE 4.01 and an ActiveX control

QuickVideo Suite
InfoValue Computing, Inc.
4 Westchester Plaza
Elmsford, New York 10523
(914) 345-5980
fax: (914) 345-5996
$4,000 plus $350 per user
Pros: Good performance; highly customizable
Cons: Developer-oriented; lacks good video editing tools; MPEG-2 requires special client hardware; Most expensive, when cost of client software considered

RELATED LINKS

How we did it

Scorecard and NetResults
Key findings, vendor contact info, pricing and more product details.

The viewing experience
A look at the players needed to view streaming media. Network World, 11/29/99.

It's Drew Carey Time
The Drew Carey Show gives viewers a Web angle to the popular TV sitcom. The Industry Standard, 11/23/99.

QuickTime: The Internet Live
The open protocol and streaming technology of QuickTime 4 shows Apple's commitment to digital media. Network World, 09/03/99.

Managing the flow of streaming media
As end users demand more multimedia on the network, network managers are faced with the dilemma of how to upgrade their networks to handle it. Network World, 08/05/99.

Streaming health care
Sun Healthcare Group is moving its intranet into the video age, with an aggressive streaming-media service that features video-enabled training applications and healthy doses of audio feeds. Network World, 06/01/99.

RealNetworks to make audio, video searchable
At the RealNetworks Conference and Exhibition '99 Glaser unveiled a project that is designed to make audio and video media searchable. Network World, 05/06/99.

More information on RealNetworks' server offerings

More information on Apple's QuickTime products

More information on Windows Media Technologies