A
Abby
THE ARRIVAL OF PLAYERLESS VIDEO AND AUDIO STREAMING
www.VideosOnWeb.com
We are familiar of the Internet as composed of text and images and a
lot of animated graphics. The next logical step is the rich media
enrichment of the World Wide Web. By rich media we mean the enabling
of video and audio to make the websites come alive. To drive this
forward is the tremendous growth of bandwidth that is already under
way.
Streaming is a technology for playing audio and video files on digital
networks, the Internet for example. A user can view the audio or video
files directly from the web server for immediate playback. This avoids
time consuming downloads of large files.
Video files are typically large files, which would take a long while
to download. (Could be few tens of minutes or even hours). Very few
users would want to wait that long before they can view a file. Most,
would loose interest if they were to wait for the whole video file to
download from the Internet before being able to view it.
VIDEO STREAMING
Hence a means had to be developed called video streaming where the
videos are ready to play as soon as the first bits of that video
arrive. We do not have to wait for the whole video to download before
we are ready to view it. Similar is the case with Audio content, which
too can be quite bulky. Streaming is the most practical way in which
video and audio can be delivered across digital networks on demand.
MEDIA PLAYERS
Streaming has been traditionally implemented using streaming servers.
The mechanism works out in a manner that a software residing at the
server communicates with another software (a player) at the user
machine, to set up the synchronisation and the delivery between the
two pieces of software.
We had three major technologies that offered streaming software,
hardware and solutions. They were:
· Real Media,
· Windows Media Player and
· Apple Quicktime.
These technologies relied upon users having to download their
respective players before they were ready to see the content being
delivered through their respective technologies. In some of these
cases, they were also tied to particular operating system.
However, the biggest factor that went against their acceptability is
the Download Warning Box that popped up every time you looked at some
of their content. Users worldwide hardly ever say Yes to
a Download Box that pops up. Due to these reasons, despite the
tremendous potential of rich media on the Internet, the acceptability
of videos has remained very low with less than 1 % of the websites of
the world offering any kind of rich media content.
To add to this, security flaws have time to time created fear in the
users, like the Feb 2004 report about security holes in the Real Media
Player that can turn the user machine into a zombie delivering
unsolicited Emails and other malicious activities like accessing
pornographic sites!
Real has slapped a 1 billion dollar lawsuit against Microsoft for its
alleged monopolistic practice in including the Windows Media Player
with its operating systems. The US government’s antitrust
proceedings against Microsoft have been closely followed by the
European Union. One remedy under consideration is a requirement that
Microsoft remove the Windows Media Player (WMP) from the versions of
Windows that are distributed within the European Union's jurisdiction.
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020478,39118928,00.htm
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040206.gtrealfeb6/BNStory/einsider/
All of these above media player solutions, require a player or any
other third party executable to be downloaded / installed and hence
are called player based solutions. These are fairly generic amongst
themselves in their implementations.
PLAYERLESS STREAMING
We now have another technology called Playerless Video Audio
Streaming, which advantages from Java to reach across all operating
systems and without the user having to ever download and install
anything. The quality is also clearly better, even though the file
sizes are much smaller. These Java based videos support a whole lot of
new functionalities inside the videos, like hyperlinks inside the
video elements and execution of scripts to bring about unlimited
interactivity in and around the videos. For example, it can change the
text around the videos in sync with the progress of the video for a
great self-paced presentation or it can pop up a purchase form in the
middle of the video.
The videos automatically detect the bandwidth of the user and send a
stream optimized for his/her connection speed. Thus making it possible
for people on very slow connections, even 5 or 10 kbps connects (as is
common in India) to get to experience streaming videos and audio.
CLIPSTREAM
This technology called Clipstream™ from Canada has just arrived
in India and is set to change the web to a more rich media experience.
The technology also offers watertight piracy protection packages,
preventing video and audio from being downloaded or stolen.
Spared from the costs and licenses of Streaming servers as required by
Player based solutions, Clipstream™ is offering extremely cost
effective solutions to hosting of videos and audios on the web, with
entry costs at around Rs 20,000 while streaming servers often run into
many thousands of dollars. Also, the biggest costs of hosting videos
on the Internet are bandwidth costs and Clipstream™ cuts down
bandwidth costs drastically because the technology advantages of http
caching. HTTP caching is a clever mechanism to pick up frequently
accessed web elements from the nearest caching servers instead from
the main server.
Player based solutions also have a licensing policy depending on the
number of simultaneous streams, Clipstream™ supports unlimited
number of simultaneous streams, all of which benefit from each other
due to http caching, getting increasingly enhanced performance. The
technology offers many firsts, including Videos inside banners and
even Videos inside Emails!
Detailed information is available on their website www.grus-india.com
in the form of a FAQ. (Frequently Asked Questions) Also Clipstream.com
ONLINE PROMOTION AND ADVERTISING
The technology opens up great opportunities for corporate websites
with Chairman’s speech, multimedia product catalogs with
voiceovers, TV style ads on websites / banners for automobile
companies, tourism and hotels, films and television, distance
education and direct marketing and public awareness campaigns through
Video Emails. In March, Reebok executed Europe’s largest video
advertising campaign, the Shakira advertisement on leading portals
like Yahoo!, MP3.com and MTV using Clipstream™ technology. The
technology was also utilized by Columbia Tristar in showcasing a
prelude to 2002 Spiderman release.
It also supports interesting features, which cater to the aesthetic
demands of the web designer and Clipstream™ can be mixed with
other technologies like Flash and Shockwave to play videos from
websites and banners.
Showcase here
www.VideosOnWeb.com
http://clipstream.com/showcase/
http://www.grus-india.com/show/Showcase.html
CLIPSTREAM LIVE
Clipstream™ also has the ability to stream LIVE video from a
site like events, seminars, trade shows, sporting events, AGMs,
Product Launches, marriages etc across the globe through the Internet.
The technology can also be adapted for low cost video conferencing
solutions on small bandwidths for corporate communications as also
CCTV applications over IP for remote monitoring of industry / shop
floor and security. These trials have also been done successfully in
India. The encoders are flexible in frame size, frame rates, quality
of compression and other parameters to offer solutions for any kind of
bandwidth starting at 40 kbps for LIVE.
Clipstream™ LIVE can also stream a television feed right on to
the Internet!
http://www.clipstream.com/products/live/
The technology was used for the first time in India for LIVE IP
Webcasting during the COMPASS 2004 IT fair on Kolkata Maidan grounds
by a local company called GRUS MEDIA WORKS, where a laptop on a public
static IP was converted to a web server, was carried around the fair
grounds on Wifi and anyone across the globe could see the fair by
looking at that IP over http. The same video can even be embedded on a
web page!
To support an increasing number of concurrent users, Clipstream™
LIVE supports Relay Server solutions for load balancing across the
globe and flexible scaling up of operations.
The author is CEO of Kolkata based GRUS Media Works, who represents
Clipstream in India and is engaged in marketing, implementing and
supporting this technology in this region. Mr Abhijit Bhattacharjee
can be reached at:
GRUS MEDIA WORKS
5C Nilanjana; 43, D H Road
Kolkata 700 034
INDIA
Email: (e-mail address removed)
Mobile: +91 98303 98631
(www.grus-india.com)
www.VideosOnWeb.com
www.VideosOnWeb.com
We are familiar of the Internet as composed of text and images and a
lot of animated graphics. The next logical step is the rich media
enrichment of the World Wide Web. By rich media we mean the enabling
of video and audio to make the websites come alive. To drive this
forward is the tremendous growth of bandwidth that is already under
way.
Streaming is a technology for playing audio and video files on digital
networks, the Internet for example. A user can view the audio or video
files directly from the web server for immediate playback. This avoids
time consuming downloads of large files.
Video files are typically large files, which would take a long while
to download. (Could be few tens of minutes or even hours). Very few
users would want to wait that long before they can view a file. Most,
would loose interest if they were to wait for the whole video file to
download from the Internet before being able to view it.
VIDEO STREAMING
Hence a means had to be developed called video streaming where the
videos are ready to play as soon as the first bits of that video
arrive. We do not have to wait for the whole video to download before
we are ready to view it. Similar is the case with Audio content, which
too can be quite bulky. Streaming is the most practical way in which
video and audio can be delivered across digital networks on demand.
MEDIA PLAYERS
Streaming has been traditionally implemented using streaming servers.
The mechanism works out in a manner that a software residing at the
server communicates with another software (a player) at the user
machine, to set up the synchronisation and the delivery between the
two pieces of software.
We had three major technologies that offered streaming software,
hardware and solutions. They were:
· Real Media,
· Windows Media Player and
· Apple Quicktime.
These technologies relied upon users having to download their
respective players before they were ready to see the content being
delivered through their respective technologies. In some of these
cases, they were also tied to particular operating system.
However, the biggest factor that went against their acceptability is
the Download Warning Box that popped up every time you looked at some
of their content. Users worldwide hardly ever say Yes to
a Download Box that pops up. Due to these reasons, despite the
tremendous potential of rich media on the Internet, the acceptability
of videos has remained very low with less than 1 % of the websites of
the world offering any kind of rich media content.
To add to this, security flaws have time to time created fear in the
users, like the Feb 2004 report about security holes in the Real Media
Player that can turn the user machine into a zombie delivering
unsolicited Emails and other malicious activities like accessing
pornographic sites!
Real has slapped a 1 billion dollar lawsuit against Microsoft for its
alleged monopolistic practice in including the Windows Media Player
with its operating systems. The US government’s antitrust
proceedings against Microsoft have been closely followed by the
European Union. One remedy under consideration is a requirement that
Microsoft remove the Windows Media Player (WMP) from the versions of
Windows that are distributed within the European Union's jurisdiction.
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020478,39118928,00.htm
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040206.gtrealfeb6/BNStory/einsider/
All of these above media player solutions, require a player or any
other third party executable to be downloaded / installed and hence
are called player based solutions. These are fairly generic amongst
themselves in their implementations.
PLAYERLESS STREAMING
We now have another technology called Playerless Video Audio
Streaming, which advantages from Java to reach across all operating
systems and without the user having to ever download and install
anything. The quality is also clearly better, even though the file
sizes are much smaller. These Java based videos support a whole lot of
new functionalities inside the videos, like hyperlinks inside the
video elements and execution of scripts to bring about unlimited
interactivity in and around the videos. For example, it can change the
text around the videos in sync with the progress of the video for a
great self-paced presentation or it can pop up a purchase form in the
middle of the video.
The videos automatically detect the bandwidth of the user and send a
stream optimized for his/her connection speed. Thus making it possible
for people on very slow connections, even 5 or 10 kbps connects (as is
common in India) to get to experience streaming videos and audio.
CLIPSTREAM
This technology called Clipstream™ from Canada has just arrived
in India and is set to change the web to a more rich media experience.
The technology also offers watertight piracy protection packages,
preventing video and audio from being downloaded or stolen.
Spared from the costs and licenses of Streaming servers as required by
Player based solutions, Clipstream™ is offering extremely cost
effective solutions to hosting of videos and audios on the web, with
entry costs at around Rs 20,000 while streaming servers often run into
many thousands of dollars. Also, the biggest costs of hosting videos
on the Internet are bandwidth costs and Clipstream™ cuts down
bandwidth costs drastically because the technology advantages of http
caching. HTTP caching is a clever mechanism to pick up frequently
accessed web elements from the nearest caching servers instead from
the main server.
Player based solutions also have a licensing policy depending on the
number of simultaneous streams, Clipstream™ supports unlimited
number of simultaneous streams, all of which benefit from each other
due to http caching, getting increasingly enhanced performance. The
technology offers many firsts, including Videos inside banners and
even Videos inside Emails!
Detailed information is available on their website www.grus-india.com
in the form of a FAQ. (Frequently Asked Questions) Also Clipstream.com
ONLINE PROMOTION AND ADVERTISING
The technology opens up great opportunities for corporate websites
with Chairman’s speech, multimedia product catalogs with
voiceovers, TV style ads on websites / banners for automobile
companies, tourism and hotels, films and television, distance
education and direct marketing and public awareness campaigns through
Video Emails. In March, Reebok executed Europe’s largest video
advertising campaign, the Shakira advertisement on leading portals
like Yahoo!, MP3.com and MTV using Clipstream™ technology. The
technology was also utilized by Columbia Tristar in showcasing a
prelude to 2002 Spiderman release.
It also supports interesting features, which cater to the aesthetic
demands of the web designer and Clipstream™ can be mixed with
other technologies like Flash and Shockwave to play videos from
websites and banners.
Showcase here
www.VideosOnWeb.com
http://clipstream.com/showcase/
http://www.grus-india.com/show/Showcase.html
CLIPSTREAM LIVE
Clipstream™ also has the ability to stream LIVE video from a
site like events, seminars, trade shows, sporting events, AGMs,
Product Launches, marriages etc across the globe through the Internet.
The technology can also be adapted for low cost video conferencing
solutions on small bandwidths for corporate communications as also
CCTV applications over IP for remote monitoring of industry / shop
floor and security. These trials have also been done successfully in
India. The encoders are flexible in frame size, frame rates, quality
of compression and other parameters to offer solutions for any kind of
bandwidth starting at 40 kbps for LIVE.
Clipstream™ LIVE can also stream a television feed right on to
the Internet!
http://www.clipstream.com/products/live/
The technology was used for the first time in India for LIVE IP
Webcasting during the COMPASS 2004 IT fair on Kolkata Maidan grounds
by a local company called GRUS MEDIA WORKS, where a laptop on a public
static IP was converted to a web server, was carried around the fair
grounds on Wifi and anyone across the globe could see the fair by
looking at that IP over http. The same video can even be embedded on a
web page!
To support an increasing number of concurrent users, Clipstream™
LIVE supports Relay Server solutions for load balancing across the
globe and flexible scaling up of operations.
The author is CEO of Kolkata based GRUS Media Works, who represents
Clipstream in India and is engaged in marketing, implementing and
supporting this technology in this region. Mr Abhijit Bhattacharjee
can be reached at:
GRUS MEDIA WORKS
5C Nilanjana; 43, D H Road
Kolkata 700 034
INDIA
Email: (e-mail address removed)
Mobile: +91 98303 98631
(www.grus-india.com)
www.VideosOnWeb.com