COM 597Streaming Media

Class 5July 6, 2006

Fortune 1000 Companies expectations on Streaming Budgets 2004

• The debate of late is less about platforms and more about how do you make money?

• Business models is the current focus• Better mouse trap?

Issues at hand• How large does your media library need to be?• What are the licensing issues?• What is Fair Use?• “Inventory leakage” vs.

“Content monetization”• How does this technology enhance the brand?

Generate revenue? Connect with customers? Increase sales? What is the ROI?

• Channel Control

Digital Darwinism• 1st digital content delivery network in 1996• Sandpiper Networks 1997• FastForward Networks 1997• These were absorbed by other networks• Other once promising companies:– Razorfish– Scient– Viant– Zephyr

Four Keys to a Profitable Digital Media Business

• Scalability• Security• Intelligence• Quality

• The choices you make around these four issues will make or break your business

Scalability

• Marketshare does not equal profitablity

• Free v. ad revenue supported content– MTV example– Live webcasts expecting the ad revenue would

follow– What is the true cost to reach viewers?

Security

• Digital Rights Management

Intelligence

• You must get accurate, reliable and useful usage and audience intelligence

• You can’t underestimate the importance of constantly measuring the success of your business.– Server logs• Total megabytes transferred• Views by clip, visitor and time period• Player and version type• Average view duration

Intelligence 2 of 2

– Server logs continued• Maximum number of simultaneous users• Unique users• Most frequent visitors• Storage utilization• Total number of user sessions• Maximum number of simultaneous users per clip• File popularity• Successful requests, failed requests, incomplete file

transfers

Quality

• Garbage in, garbage out• Today’s users expect to give up some quality

in the image when compared to television• The issue is not just encoding choices, but the

entire delivery path. Servers, routers, wiring, and the entire infrastructure must be examined

Four components to a Digital Media Business

• Licensing the technology• Securing the content• Distributing the content• Quality metrics– Getting the message across

or

– Getting the consumer to pay

What player do you choose?

Some Examples of Digital Media on the web

• iTunes• MSN• AOL• Yahoo!• YouTube• Google Video• But wait, there is more

What is Brightcove?

Brightcove

• Presenting video on the web is more than just recording, editing and publication

• You need the infrastructure and tools to widely distribute, syndicate, package and monetize video content

Brightcove 1 of 4

With Brightcove:• Create and start using an Internet broadband video

distribution channel, literally in a matter of minutes. • Your channel maybe a collection of hundreds of

videos in different thematic categories, or just one short clip.

• Brightcove supplies the tools and server space• Videos are .flv (Flash Video files)

Brightcove 2 of 4

• You can use canned players or create and modify your own, based on branding needs

• You can create playlists for your users, create RSS feeds and even let others republish your content for that truly viral video experience

• You can offer selected “players” to other sites, in essence syndicating your content, while controlling your drm and distribution

Brightcove 3 of 4

• Brightcove also allows you as a content publisher to earn a revenue from the profit that large channels such as AOL may in the future generate around your video

• For those smaller online video publishers that do not already have an ad sales department, Brightcove has set-up its own advertising network,

Brightcove 4 of 4

• On the minus side, as a content creator you can do all that Brightcove allows only from IE and only from a PC. At least for now. For viewing, all you need is Flash in any browser.

• http://www.brightcove.com/index.cfm• http://video.about.com/• http://www.mediastorm.org/

Additional QuckTime Notes

QuickTime

• The QuickTime Server runs only on Mac Hardware• Apple also offers the Darwin Streaming server and

that will run on Unix and Windows.• The nice part is Apple offers the Server software

for free.• RealServer can stream QT as can Sun’s StorEdge

Media Central

• Blog for Tuesday July 11– Review two of the Brightcove partners and

compare and contrast how they are implementing the technology

• Workshop – demo compression– demo creating a streaming metafile using Catalyst