Articles » Video Highlights
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Video email sounds like a great idea. Instead of having to read a typed message, recipients can watch a video – a much better solution for presenting visual materials.
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The Uses and Benefits of Video Streaming
Video streaming has the potential of being one of the most useful Internet technologies. Currently the most practical video streaming application is Video On Demand (VOD) that allows viewers to access streaming video files from their web browser, but the potential uses of video streaming include interactive virtual classrooms and even remote surgery.
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There are many types of files available for download from the Internet. Some are simple text files and others are programs such as word-processors or games. Most of these files have to be completely downloaded to your PC before you can use them. Why can't you view a partial text file? Well, theoretically you can, but by the nature of Internet downloads a partially downloaded text file is likely to be scrambled and unreadable.
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Most people use a webcam or camcorder as the primary source for their streaming video, but there are many other possible sources. As long as you can edit the video before making it available, almost any kind of audio-visual content can be incorporated into a streaming video. Live webcasts, of course, don't have the luxury of using a variety of sources unless you have access to a professional production studio and the personnel to prepare the material.
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The software requirements for streaming video are quite simple – a video editing program and an encoder to save the video in a streaming format. You will also need a FTP program to upload the video file to your streaming server.
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SMIL – Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
There are alternative ways to present streaming video on the Internet. A relatively new protocol called SMIL (pronounced 'smile') allows text, video, music, images and graphics to be integrated in a web page while providing control over timing and positioning.
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Live Video Conferencing and Broadcasting – Setup
There are many ways to set up a live webcast or web conference. It can be as simple as an inexpensive webcam on an individual computer or as complex as a professional television studio.
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Live Video Conferencing and Broadcasting - Some Requirements
Live video streaming requires more resources than streaming archived video files. That makes video conferencing or broadcasting more expensive than other types of streaming.
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Live Video Conferencing and Broadcasting - Introduction
The Internet has been the great leveler by allowing almost anyone to become a publisher and present his or her ideas in a public format. Now with the widespread use of broadband a whole new area of self-publishing is opening up – Internet TV.
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Introduction to Video Streaming
One of the advantages of advancing Internet technology is the ability to have multimedia content delivered right to our homes. Click a button and you can hear music or watch videos that start playing almost immediately. The wizardry behind this delivery system is called 'streaming' and can be applied to both video and audio content.
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Thanks to video streaming technology, anyone can produce a live Internet TV show from the comfort of their own home. All that is needed is a computer, a camcorder with microphone and a broadband Internet connection.
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Video Hosting - HTTP or Streaming Server
Video content can be hosted on either a HTTP server primarily designed to serve web pages or a specialized streaming server. How can you determine which is best for a particular streaming video?
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Video streaming requires several pieces of specialized hardware, but the cost is not prohibitive. Basic equipment includes a video camera, a tripod and a video capture card. Depending on your shooting location, you may also need extra microphones and lights.
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One thing that prevents many people from posting video content on their website is the bandwidth and storage space required. Small websites with limited capacity can quickly overshoot that capacity if video content is added.
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There are five major file types used for video streaming. They all offer similar video quality, but differ in their popularity with end users. Generally speaking, the five different formats are not compatible with each other. In order to see streaming video, users must have the appropriate software installed on their computer. There are some third-party video players, however, that are designed to handle a variety of streaming video formats.
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Ways Of Creating a Video Stream
After the video has been encoded and saved in an appropriate streaming format it can be uploaded to a server where it will be accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. You have two choices of server – a regular HTTP server that is normally used to host web pages or a specialized streaming server that offers more features for video streaming.
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Part of the video editing process discussed in the previous article involves optimizing the video to keep the video image as still as possible. Such a video is ideal for streaming to a variety of devices from hand-held PDA's (Personal Digital Assistant) to computers connected to broadband Internet.
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Now you have all the hardware and software – let's make our first streaming video!
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Any kind of video material can be made into a streaming video. This might tempt some to use video footage which does not belong to them. Video which is not in the public domain, however, is subject to copyright, which means that written permission must be obtained before it can be used by a third party.
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Video Basics – Compression and Bandwidth
Once you've decided on a particular video format (Windows Media, Apple Quicktime etc.) you must decide how large the video file should be. The size of the file will affect the quality of the video and the transmission speed necessary to stream the file.
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There are two basic types of video streaming – live webcasts and video on demand (VOD). Webcasts present technological challenges that make them impractical for most purposes, but VOD is fairly easy to set up for the average webmaster.
