The barriers between the electronic media are becoming blurred. Interactive television can combine web content with off-air television. Telephones and radios can display text and graphics. Web browsers have audio and video. The old paradigm of a handful of major television networks being the prime source of video programming has long gone. Cable and satellite can deliver several hundred channels to the home, but television is still mass media 200 channels for a population of millions is hardly bespoke programming. Streaming adds a new and high-capacity delivery vehicle for video content that can be personalized for each viewer. It may be special content or targeted ads. The quality delivered to the viewer has increased steadily since the mid-1990s, with improvements in codecs and broadband access for the last mile, and in 2002, it could rival VHS, with many quality improvements in the offing. Applications for streaming media 323 Interactive Content Factory Content creation Satellite Ingest (encoding) Windows Server 2003 NetEdit Player EDL Remote editing VCR Figure 16.7 Interactive Content Factory data flow. TWIinteractive Ltd.
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it into a finished program. This frees the editorial processes from traditional linear videotape editing or the dedicated nonlinear workstation. TWIinteractive has developed a digital asset management solution called the Interactive Content Factory (ICF). This provides an end-to-end solution for the acquisition, production, and distribution of video content to a wide range of delivery channels including television and wireless applications. ICF has much simplified the delivery and syndication of live sports programming and the associated highlights packages using a number of new technologies. One component of the ICF solution is NetEdit, a desktop editing product. This leverages the power of streaming video, and specifically new features of the Windows Media 9 Series to provide increased functionality for the remote user. Most digital asset management products give the ability to view proxies of video assets. ICF takes this a step further. NetEdit is a browser-based interface that can be used to edit archive files, or even live video feeds. The operator can perform frame-accurate edits with transitions and effects, and record a voice-over. The result can be exported as an edit decision list (EDL) for a craft editor to refine the rough cut. Alternately, the ICF video server can use the EDL to automatically implement the edits on the broadcast resolution material (a process called auto-conform). ICF has developed a way to burn running time code into a live feed encoded as Windows media format. Conventionally the time index object for the streaming file is generated when the file is closed. The ICF video server embeds the time code, so that live content can be edited whilst being captured. For sports coverage, this means that highlights can be packaged during play as fast as the editor can mark the in and out points. As an example, a goal could be delivered to viewers as a short clip less than a minute after the event. NetEdit has a familiar timeline interface, with all the functions needed for simple editing, but requires only Internet Explorer installed on the workstation and a broadband connection with an IP connection to the media server. Summary The last 100 years have seen a steady evolution of new media channels. The first mass communication media, print, was joined by radio. Alongside the development of radio the telephone opened up personal communication. Then came television. At each stage the new medium originally was treated as a variant of its predecessor. Some of the first radio news broadcasts used the anchor to read the newspaper headlines. Early television was like a radio broadcast with pictures. Gradually the creators of content learned how to exploit the new medium in a way that broke from the stereotypes of its forerunners. 322 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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Streaming media is used as a core technology for the location of the relevant content and then for subsequent viewing of the media library. You can find an in-depth study of digital asset management technology in the book by David Austerberry (2004), Digital Asset Management, Focal Press, ISBN 0240519248. Remote content production If content can be viewed as proxies, why not edit the content using the proxies? This would allow an editor remote from an event to view the content and edit Applications for streaming media 321 search result set thumb nails low-res proxy hi-res streaming media videotape 25 Mbit/s 2.8 GBytes 56 MBytes 3 MBytes 1 kBytes file size (15 min clip) stream rate media 20 kBytes 500 kbit/s 30 kbit/s Figure 16.6 The hierarchy of media proxies.
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material. With video and audio you do not have this luxury. Traditional libraries of tapes on shelves often have either simple card indices or a computer database. The initial use of asset management was for television news archives to give journalists and program researchers full access to the vault. Asset management is not limited to internal use; it also can be used as an aid to the marketing of video content to the consumer or for sales to other program makers. A typical example would be a health information provider that wants to sell videos. The use of a powerful video search engine helps potential customers to find the right product for their needs a useful adjunct to the selling process. The potential purchaser can preview material, find the right video, then order a DVD or, alternatively, watch a stream. Video libraries also can be used in higher education. A university can record lectures as streams and make the files available on-demand to students. Again, the asset management makes the lecture archive searchable. There are several issues to overcome with an asset library: How do you access the library from remote or dispersed sites? How do you find material that you want? How do you preview the material? How do you distribute the material? The obvious way to offer access is through a web browser. That way the user can use a conventional search GUI, and the media can be viewed with a player plug-in. The drawback is that the library material may be on analog tape Betacam, U-Matic, or VHS or for more recent material, Digital Betacam or DV. Clearly you cannot deliver video over the corporate network; it has to be in a format that can be carried over IP. Streaming formats provide the answer. Once the video is encoded it can be viewed from a desktop computer, rather than requiring a dedicated video player and monitor. The solution to efficient network utilization is to use a hierarchy of lower resolution proxies. That way you start with lightweight downloads, and as you narrow the search, larger resolution media files can be viewed. That way the speed of search and the network utilization are optimized. The initial search is text only; the results set may be 10 or 100 possible clips. You then can view thumbnails to help identify the required clip. Once a likely file has been located, then you can view a low-resolution stream, maybe 30 kbit/s. Once you have confirmed that you have found the correct file, you then can view a high-resolution stream, perhaps at 500 kbit/s. The alternative would be to order a dub of the master tape. 320 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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Digital asset management Streaming provides a vital tool for digital asset management systems. These are the systems used for the management of multimedia content for the workgroup or enterprise. Traditionally video content has been distributed by U-matic or VHS tape, or more recently, the DVD. Using streaming, video content can be viewed with a desktop computer without the need for a VCR and video monitor. This enables access to video content by anyone with a network connection. Although the full advantages will be most evident in media businesses, corporate-wide access to video can be useful to many other businesses. Content could be television news clips with relevance for the corporation, the archive of television commercials for the company s products, or past corporate addresses. Digital asset management provides the tools to search for relevant content, browse the streaming proxies, and order broadcast resolution copies as required. Many businesses have libraries of video material, and not just broadcasters. Advertising agencies and large corporations both can have extensive archives of commercials and training material. As you build up a library of video clips, gradually a problem becomes evident. How do you find the clip you want? With text documents, you can search for a string of characters to locate relevant Applications for streaming media 319 position in presentation emboldened Agenda Streaming video PowerPoint slides navigation Figure 16.5 Microsoft Producer output on a web browser. Screen shot reprinted by permission from Microsoft Corporation.
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Microsoft Producer 2003 Microsoft Producer is a product for creating synchronized multimedia presentations for viewing in a web browser. Audio and video tracks, PowerPoint slides, and images can all be linked together on an interactive time line. As the user navigates back and forth through the presentation, the slides change in synchronism with the video track. In this way it is very easy for the viewer to step through different parts of a presentation. The tool is an adjunct to Microsoft PowerPoint. It is aimed at the internal communications staff of a corporation, so presentations can be prepared inhouse, without the need to outsource to a production company. The production process starts with a PowerPoint presentation. As the presentation is run through, the slide changes are recorded on a time line. Audio and video tracks can then be synchronized to the same time line. At its simplest, you can make a voice-over to accompany a PowerPoint presentation. For a more compelling presentation, a video clip of the presenter can be added. Other elements can be incorporated, like still photographs and links, and placed into an HTML page for delivery. Microsoft supplies a number of templates for the page layout, much like a word processor. The final integrated presentation is a web page; the Internet Explorer browser can be used to play the final presentation. The audio and video content is carried by Windows Media, embedded in the pages. The advantage of Producer is that it is simple to use; any PowerPoint user could soon learn to use the extra facilities. Note that the output does not have to be streamed; it can also be distributed via FTP or CD-ROM. Discreet Cleaner Many nonlinear editing applications can directly output a limited set of streaming formats. If you need flexibility and additional control, then Discreet Cleaner is a stand-alone encoding platform. This very popular authoring application is available for both Windows and Mac platforms (Cleaner XL and Cleaner 6, respectively). Cleaner supports over 60 streaming codecs including the lesser used like the Kinoma (for Palm PDAs). It also can be used to code MPEG-2 for DVDs. Cleaner has a facility for programming synchronized events, called Event-Stream. This lets you create interactive rich media applications. All of the main streaming architectures offer some level of interactive features. Cleaner lets you add stream navigation, synchronize HTML to streaming media, embed links, and add interactive hotspots. Cleaner is agnostic toward the streaming architecture, so you can author once and then encode many times to support several streaming architectures. 318 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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Advertisers would be reluctant to place technical barriers in the way of potential viewers of their messages. There are many outlets for advertising beyond the Web; video can be streamed over dedicated circuits to digital signage for live commercials at the point of sale. Producing rich media A skilled multimedia developer will have no problems adding interactive video and audio into existing rich media web pages, but a certain amount of hand scripting is bound to be needed. For the less skilled, there are a number of tools to ease the creation of presentations. Applications for streaming media 317 site branding text content streaming video insert site navigation still graphics VCR interaction controls Figure 16.4 Music promotion site. BT Openworld, produced by Tornado Productions Ltd.
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Product launches Conventional product launches usually mean gathering at a venue for a live event. With remote offices, this is not always possible. Rich media means that part of the experience can be shared with any viewer that has a connection to the Internet. Music promotion The web has a long association with music, stemming from the use of the Internet to download MP3 audio files. So it is natural to use the Web to promote and retail music. This site was designed for a broadband service provider. It has clips of the band performing, backstage interviews, and other content of special interest to fans of the band. Two versions were created, one broadband for delivery at 250 kbit/s and a simpler version for delivery at 28 kbit/s. Many younger people the potential audience may not have broadband access, so it is important not to exclude them. By offering alternative low bit-rate content, perhaps audio-only, they can use low-cost dial-up modems to access similar content to broadband connection. The style is very different from the average web page; it is more akin to television or the CD-ROM. Note that the small size of the video playback area does not detract from the overall design. Relevant graphics merge with the video into seamless tableaux. The media player has been embedded into the background image, so the player surround does not impinge upon the overall graphic design. Some of the usual Web design conventions are used for familiarity; note the drop-down menu to select other pages on the site. The site is designed to display full-screen. Advertising When streaming first started, proponents imagined TV-style advertising on web sites. As broadcast television had demonstrated, video is a compelling format to deliver the marketing message. The reality was that brands were unwilling to deliver their message as a stalling, postage-stamp size video. As broadband usage has risen, and CDNs can offer a higher quality of service, streamed video advertisements are gaining acceptance. The pop-up ad and the banner have proved unpopular with viewers, and advertisers are looking for different ways to deliver a message. The auto manufacturers pioneered the medium, but now it is used by fast-moving consumer goods. The early users have adopted Macromedia s Flash. It is almost ubiquitous in Web browsers, and is very easy to upgrade as new versions are released. 316 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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Apreso, which can capture a live presentation. The presentation is encoded as a video and audio file, and the slides are captured as they change. The live stream also is archived so viewers can watch on-demand at a time that may be more convenient than viewing the live stream. Virage s VS Webcasting adds the facility of interactivity with the audience, to answer questions, conduct polls, and collect viewing statistics. Products like Apreso and VS Webcasting make it very easy to share information with remote offices or foreign clients. The news site One of the most successful applications for streaming has been the financial news site. The big agencies like Bloomberg and Reuters have television channels, streaming stories around the clock. The traders have an insatiable demand for content, plus they have broadband access to the Internet. Rich media allows interviews to be combined with text stories generated from the agency feeds. Unlike television, there is more freedom in the use of text. The screen resolution of the typical computer display is higher than a standard-definition interlaced television receiver; so more background information can be given in text form. Applications for streaming media 315 Figure 16.3 Webzine Tornado Productions. Marketing Streaming can be used as part of the marketing mix to inform sales personnel and customers about new products. The interactive nature of streaming lends it to applications like product launches.
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Video-on-demand (VOD) Video-on-demand (VOD) has presented a challenge to many operators over the past 20 years. Ever since analog cable systems offered a gateway to the home, companies have strived to construct systems to deliver content on demand. Various schemes have been tried, including fiber to the home. Until this century, there has never been a return on investment. The VHS (and later DVD) rental outlets set the benchmark for price and picture quality even though you had to drive to the nearest mall. Conventional television required expensive storage and distribution systems to deliver unicast content. The advent of video compression and the everlowering costs of storage and servers now make cost-effective VOD services a reality. The early systems were adopted by the closed networks like hotel movie channels. The hotels could charge premium prices for the captive customer. To provide such a service to the public requires a different scale of infrastructure. There are two ways to deliver content, over cable television circuits, and using broadband phone connections (ADSL). In countries that are deploying new cable television networks, there is the opportunity to supply IP set-top boxes so that VOD can be streamed, then displayed on a regular television receiver. In countries with an installed base of older boxes, support for such services awaits the replacement cycle for the installed base of boxes. Many CDN networks now offer VOD, including Real, MSN, and Akamai. Corporate communications The corporate webcast has become an integral part of the quarterly earnings call, but streaming is not just for investors. Most departments can use streaming, either to replace meetings or to convey information product training, conveying HR policies, and general corporate messages the possibilities are immense. Streaming becomes vital for corporations with many remote sites, or to communicate to distributors, agents, and resellers. Staff training Staff training is a prime user of multimedia technology. Staff training can be expensive. It is costly to travel to a dedicated training center. CD-ROMs have been popular, but the production costs are high if interactive presentations are used. Rich media allows the typical stand-up with slides to be used, without the extra production costs. PowerPoint alone lacks the presence of the speaker. A presentation can be prepared offline with simple products like Microsoft Producer. What about the live presentation? Anystream has created a product, 314 The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming
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