If your viewers connect by modems, you're looking at 160 by 120 pixels (a browser page is about 580 by 420 pixels) and maybe 4 frames per second (North American video is 30 frames per second). We are not talking about television.
Indeed, the" poor" quality of "transpixins" - as internet video used to be called - has led many producers to reject streaming video in favor of internet video to download. Some producers are even putting streaming video files on websites not to be watched in real time but to be downloaded.
The difference is a typical streaming video will pause or "buffer" for a few seconds and then play in the browser window. Apple's Quicktime video has a fast start capability where it will play after it has downloaded/saved a certain percentage of the file. The reality for ordinary modem users, however, is that you can watch streaming video in real time while it can take hours to download/save a video from the internet.
The downside, of course, is that a properly compressed downloadable internet video is of better quality than a real time streamed video. If you have a high speed connection, downloads are a lot faster. Also, internet "congestion" means even streaming files will pause and "rebuffer" from time to time.
However, in this guide we are only looking at real time streaming video in three formats - VIVOACTIVE, REAL G2 and QUICkTIME 4.
The advantages of VIVO is that it's an easy format to use and the videos can be embedded on any web page as long as the Internet Service Provider modifies its MIME (multipurpose internet mail extension) files. No special streaming server is required.
VIVO will also convert files to ASF for Microsoft streaming (not available to Macs).
VIVO uses a standard H.263 video compression and two audio codecs (compression/decompression) - G.723 (8 KHZ/16 bit) and FM (22 KHZ/16 bit).
The viewer downloads a free VIVOACTIVE player which streams but doesn't download/save the clip. The player "buffers" a percentage of the file and then you can watch it.
In VIVOACTIVE PRODUCER, you simply open a QUICKTIME movie (or AVI in Windows) and encode it as a VIVO file. There are preset formats for different connection speeds, frame sizes and audio codecs.
A typical size is 160 by 120 but VIVO will save from 49 by 49 to 352 by 288.
As with all streaming video, it is important to realize that you have to reach a balance between audio and video quality. For example, when encoding for a 28 KPS modem, you have 20 KPS to play with. For voice quality, it mean you have 8 KPS for audio and 12 KPS for video.
If you try to improve audio quality you will lessen video quality and vice versa.
In 1998 it introduced REAL G2 which borrowed from IBM's video conferencing software.
REAL files can be streamed from an ordinary web server but works best on a REAL G2 server. These servers are not available for the MAC OS.
A free 25 stream server is available for LINUX and WINDOWS. However, raising the ante to a 40 stream server costs about $7,000 US and it goes up from there.
REAL VIDEO PRODUCER can encode from a QUICKTIME movie or from a live feed. It saves in a variety of preset formats.
With additional software, you can connect a computer encoding REAL VIDEO to a REAL G2 server for broadcasting live on the internet.
Otherwise, you simply put your encoded files in a REAL G2 server or an ordinary web server. Again, the ISP has to configure its MIME files for REAL.
REAL offers free downloadable players to the viewer.
REAL files can be embedded in web pages or the REAL player can be triggered to popup and play the file. In either case, the producer has to write metafiles which trigger the REAL player (installed as a browser plugin) to play a specified file. That is, the web page calls the URL of the metafile and the metafile triggers the player.
REAL files on a REAL G2 server are usually viewed by RTSP (real time streaming protocol) rather than HTTP (hyper text transport protocol). This means you can also open location in REAL player to view the file without the browser.
Sorenson Broadcaster takes a live video feed and broadcasts it either on a LAN, or to a specific computer on the internet, or to a MAC OS X streaming video replication server which then sends the signal to as many computers as the available bandwidth will allow.
Sorenson only streams for one connection speed and you can choose from a variety of presets or customize your own.
It offers H.263 and Sorenson video codecs and usually Qualcomm PureVoice for voice and QDesign for music.
Sorenson will broadcast a maximum frame size of 176 by 144.
While broadcasting, you can also save the broadcast as a Quicktime movie. However, this movie has to be "hinted" before it can be placed on a streaming video (RTSP) server.
You can "hint" movies for the streaming video server using Quicktime Pro or Movie Cleaner software.
The other requirement is a "pointer " file (similar to REAL's metafile) which is placed on the web (HTTP) server and linked to a web page. Its purpose is to trigger Quicktime 4 player (another free player) to play the video.
Apple doesn't offer REAL's SureStream (which detects the viewer's connection speed and automatically plays the right format from one file) but you can produce one small reference movie which will detect the modem speed and then choose the right file from multiple copies on the server.
2. Light evenly with soft lighting and avoid shadows.
3. Closeups work best or talking heads and limited motion.
4. Use a solid color, soft/out of focus background or gray, seamless paper.
5. Don't zoom.
6. On camera people should wear light, solid colors not darks or whites.
7. Use an off-camera mic - shotgun or lavalier.
8. Shoot tight (not a moving object) for small frame sizes.
9. Avoid unnecessary edits, especially rapid cuts and effects.
10. Use big fonts for titles and don't scroll.
2. Use 24 bit color (thousands of colors).
3. Capture at 15 frames per second - 160 by 120 pixels uncompressed or capture at 30 frames per second - 320 by 240 pixels with component compression.
4. Note that in MAC OS (no software yet for 9) there is a 2 gig limit on captures,
5. Either capture audio at 16 bit, 22.05 KHZ Mono or capture at 44 KHZ and convert after capture.
6. Defragment hard disks before capture.
7. Use a separate disk to capture video.
8. Give video software as much ram as possible.
9. Turn off as many extensions as possible. Experiment and save a set just for video capture. Turn off Apple Talk; virtual memory; screen savers; file sharing; networking,
10. Set your disk cache to minimum (say, 128k).
11. Choose local talk instead of ethernet in the Apple Talk control panel (Apple Talk is turned off).
12. Put media in all the removable media hard drives.
2. All the software have presets to automatically encode your videos.
3. Please note that a 28.8 KPS modem is allocated 20 KPS; a 56.6 KPS modem is allocated 34 KPS while a High Speed connection gets about 200 KPS.
4. You generally have a choice whether to choose a music or voice codec and also whether the video or the audio is most important in the tradeoff.
5. In video compression there's a tradeoff between frame rate, frame size and frame quality.
6. Sometimes it might be preferable to only stream audio and choose a still from the video. (With a REAL G2 server you can also present a slide show.)
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