The setup

Three distinct groups of technology must be combined when deploying streaming media in a corporation.

Creating content

The ability to create streaming media content begins with video or audio capture tools, such as cameras and microphones, followed by digitizing, encoding and compression tools.

Since these processes are computationally intensive, they are frequently accelerated with hardware from ViewCast, Optibase, Pinnacle Systems and others.

Managing and distributing content

Storing streaming media content during production or on completion does not require any particular storage device. However, it is likely to consume significant resources. For example, one minute of finished content transmitted at 100K bit/sec will take up approximately 6M bytes. If the content must be encoded in multiple formats, then the storage requirements must be doubled.

In corporate video production, the video is already compressed as much as possible for a given frame rate and window size. Secondary compression using nonvideo tools does not produce satisfactory results.

Some vendors index their content to make it easier to retrieve. Other platforms or technologies then publish content to servers designed to push streaming media to users. Generally, a publishing "engine" is manual in the early stages of a deployment and increasingly automated, using tools such as Real Producer and Microsoft Producer, as the number of events increases.

To deliver time-based content to any IP-connected desktop, bandwidth needs to be available. A business-quality streaming media experience in a quarter-screen window at 20 frames per second is usually compressed to 100K bit/sec.

For on-demand applications, each user connects with a server in a one-to-one relationship. To preserve wide-area bandwidth, frequently requested files are preloaded on content caches on the edges of the network.

Some companies, such as CacheFlow, Network Appliance and Inktomi, include streaming media management layers for their standard caches.

Others, such as Starbak, Vividon and Digital Fountain, offer specialized appliances for storing and delivering media to large audiences. These accelerators and streaming servers can reside in a network operations center or in racks in regional points of presence.

Service providers are often involved in the delivery of streaming media to large audiences.

When building an enterprise network, a management application is recommended. Companies such as Digital Pipe, enScaler and VideoSpheres offer special platforms for easy event and network provisioning, subscriber addition, custom content groupings and the ability to filter content.

For live events, IP multicasting is widely recommended. Companies such as Multicast Technologies offer access to an IP multicast cloud for the purpose of efficiently delivering video to multicast groups.

Seeing is believing

At the client, the software for decoding and displaying the streaming media content (primarily Real Player and Windows Media Player) is relatively simple and compatible with all current operating systems. Speakers or headphones are an additional requirement.

Streaming Media Technology Insider - More articles and background on the technology

The setup

Creating content

Managing and distributing content

Seeing is believing

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