Introduction to Video Streaming

Intro to Video Streaming

Zeb BhattiDigital Learning InstituteTorrance, California

Very Rapid Learning Series

2Intro to Video Streaming – Aurangzeb Bhatti, Inc., 2001, to 2009

About the Author

- Aurangzeb “Zeb” Bhatti launched Computerland LAX in 1985 and through acquisitions of PACTEL InfoSystems and NYNEX Computer Systems grew the company to a US$ 250 million+ and 400 employees. The new company called NovaQuest InfoSystems was sold to SARCOM, Inc. in 1998.-In 1999, Zeb launched WebVision Inc, and acquired eNom Inc. in 1999. eNom is the largest wholesaler of Internet domains in the world, providing domain name registration and other online services to small and home-based businesses, individuals, traffic aggregators and resellers (http://www.enom.com).-In 2004, Zeb launched an On-Line university (McKinley University) and authored the Virtual University System (VUS) product.EXPERTISE:-Network, Systems and Telecommunications ( Architected and Build a Fiber-Optics Network and a series of Data Centers connecting five major cities in he US. The high-speed network was one of the first to implement EMC Storage Area Network technology for real-time mirroring and redundancy)- Information Security – Chief Information Security Officer - Zeb has United States Patents on the Virtual University Appliance (“VU Appliance”) -used by educational institutions to E-Learning environments easily. Software has features for creating/aggregating content for courses,Courseware Repository, Learning Management and Registration System (LMS), Online Quiz and Exams Server, Online Evaluations by Students and Instructors, Collaboration, Discussion, Online Marketing for courses and recruiting Instructor/Mentors- CO-Author of Curum Gold VIP (Visual Iconic Programming Language)


Agenda

Rich Media AgeWhat is Video Streaming?Standards for Video StreamingVideo Compression Standards (CODECS)Network Protocols for StreamingRole of Networks, Protocols &Encoding Standards in StreamingVideo Indexing & SearchingVideo Service Providers

Rich Media Age


Rich Media?Rich Media?

Other Content Types

� Audio Speeches

� Illustrations

� Photographs

� Digital Images

� On-Line Books

� Maps / Spatial Data

� Research Papers

� Audio Lectures

� Technical Help & How-To

� On-Line Newspapers

� On-Line Magazines

� Statistics & Reports

� Software Downloads

Video Content Types

� Cartoons & Animation

� Talk Shows� Music Videos� Documentaries

� Movies

� History Channel

� Current Events

� News footage

� Dramas & TV Series� Health Channel

� Sports Channel

� Leisure & Travel

� Science Fiction

� Marketing Videos

� Training Videos


Acquire Content

Distribute & Sell Content

‘‘RichRich --MediaMedia ’’ Storage & Management RepositoryStorage & Management Repository

CommercialCommercialEducationalEducational

EntertainmentEntertainmentOtherOther

Store, Administer & Manage Content

ResearchResearch BroadcastingBroadcasting


Kim Maxwell, founder of one of the earliest modem manufacturers, Racal-Vadic, said

“Video-on-demand may drive a whole new network topology that will require storage and bandwidth requirements that exceed today's data network.”

Video-On-Demand (VOD)


GammaLink

Who’d ever want a fax card in their PC?

1984

1997

Who’d ever want to watch video on a PC?

What is Video Streaming?


Video Streaming?

Real-time vs. Archived (Video-On-Demand)

ATM, ISDN & IP Standards

Unicast vs. Multicast

Server-based vs. Server-less

UDP vs. TCP (HTTP)


What is Streaming?

Streaming media refers to the ability to deliver “Rich Media” such as Video, Audio and Presentations (for example as PowerPoint), that play immediately when accessed, without requiring a full download before playback.

‘Streaming’ content delivery falls into two main types:

(a) Live Multimedia Broadcasts (often called Webcasts for IP Networks)

(b) Archived Video and Audio accessed ‘On Demand’by users (often called ‘VOD’)



Streaming video means that part of the file is being played while the rest of it is transferring from a remote location. To help explain what is meant by streaming, lets use the metaphor of ordering pizza.Typically, we order a pizza, wait 20 minutes and have nothing to eat for 20 minutes, after which comes the entire pizza.


If there were a pizza restaurant that sold "streaming pizza" then the first slice would arrive at your table within a few minutes while the rest of the pizza was cooking.

You get the "instant gratification" of seeing the start of the video while the rest is arriving.

Since videos can be very large, you might say that the value of "streaming video" is most appreciated with longer movies.



Streaming technology allows you to view online video resources as they actually stream to your machine, rather than requiring you to download complete (and often very large) files first.



The downside of streaming video (whether Live or On-Demand’) is that the viewer needs a program on their computer (such as Real Player or Windows Media Player) to watch them.

You also need need a special server for storing streaming videos and a software program that lets you produce streaming videos.



In simple terms, the process of getting from raw footage to streamed content works like this:

• An event is recorded.

• The content is digitized and edited using video editing hardware and software.

• The digital video and audio content is ‘encoded’ for streaming. (The most widely recognized encoding standards are Microsoft Windows Media and Real-Networks RealVideo. But higher resolution MPEG encoders are becoming common).

• Tools and software also exist to ‘encode’ for AVI, QuickTime and MPEG.



• The encoded media file or ‘live stream’ is stored on a host computer (Server) that has streaming media server software installed.

• A user clicks a link on an internet/intranet page to request a video stream or accesses a database of stored streaming content.

• The host server delivers the digitized content to the end user, who watches it through a player utility (such as Windows Media Player or Real Player) that displays the media file on the desktop.




Video-on-demand enables users to choose the movies they want from a ‘Video Server’ via an on-screen menu, and control the sessions with VCR-like functions such as stop, fast-forward and rewind.

VOD is unlike traditional pay-per-view, where the consumer has to watch the movie at a fixed time.


Broadcast quality ‘Video-on-demand’applications come as both pre-cached and streaming services.

Under the pre-cached service model, content is stored in a video server located at either the CO or on a consumer's set-top box; customers can simply chose the movies they want to watch at any time.



Broadcast quality streaming services, typically require up to 10 Mbps of bandwidth to deliver a movie as and when requested to the home.

New advances in compression technology like MPEG-4, however, could enable carriers to stream VHS-quality movies and possibly DVD-quality movies in about 2 Mbps to 3 Mbps.



VOD Streaming Servers are also called “Media Servers”?

All digitized data is stored as “ones” and “zeros”.

Rich media demands quality criteria beyond availability, reliability, and scalability.

With conventional IT Processes, alphanumeric text travels in packets, like water balloons.

Video-On-Demand (VOD) Servers


Rich media must flow in continuous streams from the Media Servers, a bit like water from squirt guns-music and video go directly to TVs or PCs.

For video, continuous deliveryis the crucial element.

Maintaining consistent, continuous signals and images, and keeping audio and video in sync, are challenges.

Video-On-Demand (VOD) Servers


With TV, we see no downloading effect. Video is streamed to our television screens.

VOD & Video-archive access requires clip searches and demand specialized technologies.

Generally, Digital Video is created, manipulated, stored, and distributed differently than “plain” digital data.



Video is used for marketing, sales, collaboration, training, and knowledge management.

E-commerce companies are finding that they must stream media from their web sites to keep customers’ attention.

Video is used to capture the expertise of employees in specific positions.

Where is Video-On-Demand (VOD) used


What about Hollywood?

Today, films are shot, shipped on reels, and exhibited in analog.

Tomorrow, they’ll be produced, distributed, and shown digitally- perhaps sent over satellites, downloaded to a ‘Media Server’ in a theatre, and streamed from the ‘Media Server’to the screen.

Hollywood & VOD


What about Health care?

In health care, patients’ medical records may be combined into one centrally stored file that includes high-resolution x-rays, ultrasounds, or cardiology tests accessible in seconds to the doctors.

It will dramatically improve the quality of patient care.

Healthcare & VOD


Other Emerging Applications for Internet

Entertainment - Games, Sports

Education, Edutainment

Information, News

Commerce - Product Sales

Communication – Chat

Video Clips


Video Streaming Levels

Desktop Video Streaming Light load – range 400 kbps

Near-Broadcast Quality Moderate load – range 1.5 to 2.5 mbps

HDTV Projection Quality Heavy Load - over 45Mb per stream


A number of technologies continue to target the last-mile for the delivery of video-on-demand, including cable, DSL, FTTC (fiber-to-the-curb) and MMDS (multi-channel multi-point distribution service).

Although the latter two may some day be an alternative delivery scheme, most of the noise continues to come from cable and DSL proponents.

Video-On-Demand Delivery


Characteristics of a Mass Market

Standards - Interoperable Equipment

Ease of Use

Low Cost

99% of the Market Served

Industry Infrastructure

‘Killer’ Applications

Products that Work


Streaming Inter-operability

ClearVideo

InterVU

Netshow

Oracle

Precept

QuickTime

RealVideo

Microsoft

Starlight

TrueVision

VDO Net

Vivo

Vosaic

VXtreme

Xing


Industry Infrastructure

Compression - Audio & Video

Protocol Implementation & Support

Client Players & Plug-ins

Video Server Software

Editing & Content Creation Tools

Scheduling & Session Management

Many companies together form the Audio/Video digitizing and streaming industry. The following are the main segments in the industry:

Standards For Video Streaming


Standards for Video Streaming

Video File Formats

Protocol Standards

Codec Standards

Broadband Scaleable Video

File Compression and Encoding Format

Error Control & Recovery

Streaming Formats (ASF, RM, MPG)


Not Like Watching TV!


Internet & Video

The Internet poses several problems for the delivery of data

Variable Bandwidth

Variable Delay

Packet Loss

Very detrimental to interactive videodelivery

How do we transmit video on the Internet in the face of varying bandwidth?


Video Client

Streaming Video

Bandwidth Adaptation

Note: The combination of smooth congestion control and clever receiver buffering can overcome the evils of bandwidth variation!

Request for Video

Streaming Video

Loss/Latency Feedback

Video Server


Bandwidth Adaptation

Available bandwidth varies with time

Servers should adapt to varying bandwidthCongestion Control: Transmission rate must– correspond to available bandwidth– be TCP-friendly

Quality Adaptation: Quality of video should correspond to transmission rate

Limited capacity for buffering!


• A Codec works within a File Formats (which displays the video) to compress and decompress Video Data.

• There are several File Formats in widespread use today, and these formats can use a variety of Codecs.

• Popular File Format and filename extensions include:• AVI - Audio Video Interleaved File (Video for Windows)• MOV - QuickTime Video • QT – QuickTime Video• WMV & ASF – Microsoft Windows Media Video • MPE - Moving Picture Experts Group Video File• MPEG - Moving Picture Experts Group Video File• MPG - Moving Picture Experts Group Video File• RM or .RAM – RealMedia Real Networks

Video File Formats


• AIF - Audio Interchange File

• AIFC - Audio Interchange File, Compressed

• AIFF - Audio Interchange File

• AU - Audio U-law File Format

• KAR - Karaoke MIDI File

• MID - Musical Instrument Digital Interface

• MIDI - Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Audio File Formats


• MOV - QuickTime Audio

• MP2 - MPEG Layer 2 Audio File

• MPA - MPEG Related File

• MPEG - MPEG Layer 3 Audio File

• MPGA - MPEG Related File

• QT - QuickTime Audio

Audio File Formats


• RA - Streamed RealNetwork Audio

• RAM - Streamed RealNetwork Audio

• RPM - Static RealNetwork Audio

• SND - Macintosh Sound File System 7

• WAV - Windows Audio File Format

Audio File Formats


• Streaming video from ‘video servers’ has special requirements:

• The video file must be written in a format that's not only pre-compressed when written, but is also optimized for being viewed on the client while the file is still being transmitted.

• Mature digital-video formats, such as MPEG-1 and QuickTime, were designed with this in mind.

• Microsoft is pushing a new format, Action Streaming Format (ASF), which is designed to send streaming video more smoothly.

Streaming Video Servers Formats


• Though Video Servers are moving toward a one-product-fits-all model, it's still necessary to decide whether you'll be streaming video to 'Internet Users' at large or just to 'Local LAN Users' on a known, high-bandwidth network.

• If your goal is Internet Users, there are several servers from to choose from;

• Real Networks (RM & G2 Format)• Microsoft (ASF)• Apple (QuickTime)

Video Streaming on the Web


• Active Streaming Format (ASF), is a new file format from Microsoft that's designed to allow the streamed delivery and synchronized playback of Multiple Media types, including;

• Video • Animation• Graphics• Audio • MIDI Music• Text

Active Streaming Format (ASF)


• According to Microsoft, ASF is designed to replace a number of common Audio/Video file formats, such as;

• Microsoft's AVI • Apple's QuickTime• Vendor-independent MPEG-1 and MPEG-2

• To that end, Microsoft has submitted its preliminary version of ASF (supported by Microsoft's NetShow streaming-video and NetMeeting video-conferencing software) to approximately 50 industry players, including;

• Progressive Networks• Intel• Adobe



•A second version of the ASF draft specification was completed on September 10, 1997. According to Microsoft, after revisions the draft will be submitted to an international standards body- although the standards body has not yet been determined. For more information on ASF, see www.microsoft.com/netmm/sff.

•Smooth Moves for Audio/Video Formats;•ASF files begin with a 'Header Section', which provides synchronization parameters and describes the content and the various compression codecs used.

•Following the 'Header Section' is the 'Data Section' that contains the actual content, which is broken into smaller 'Cells' and Interlaced according to their presentation time.



• Optionally, a 'Media Index' sits between the ASF Header and Data Sections, allowing for fast-forwarding or skipping directly into the middle of the playback.

• An additional ASF feature is delivery scalability. The ASF file can be designed to have a base stream, which provides 'Lowest-Quality' media, and additional 'Enhancement Streams' to add 'Higher Quality'- if the client can handle the additional data and if there's sufficient bandwidth available.

• The relationships between the various playback streams can be made more complex; for example, if the client has selected a certain Language, Text, Audio, or even Graphics, that language can be sent, but streams in other languages might be suppressed as well.



New encoding Formats

RealVideo 9 Encoding Format (RV9)

• RealNetworks latest codec, RealVideo 9 lets Webmasters deliver high-quality video at reduced data rates;

• RealNetworks implies that its codec is superior to those from competitors. It also claims that RV9 delivers quality similar tothat of MPEG-2 but at one-quarter the data rate. Our tests reveal that though RV9 is good, it's not that Good

• In the streaming-video arena, RealNetworks, most prominent competitors are;

1. Microsoft - Windows Media Technologies (WMV 8),

2. Sorenson Media - Sorenson Video 3;

3. On2 Technologies - RV5.



• You can produce your own test files using RealNetworks' Producer 9 Preview encoder. The files can be four bit rates: 34 Kbps,100 Kbps, 200 Kbps, and 500 Kbps.

• As you watch these encoding test clips streaming in real, time, the RV9 will appear to edge out the others in terms of quality.

• To compare more closely, you can capture -three still screens of these encoded clips and compared them side by side. RV9 will show better quality in some but not all.

• Though RV9 is clearly an improvement over RealVideo 8, our testing did not verify the company's claims of 30 percent bandwidth savings.

• Specifically, when comparing RV8 files with RV9 files (at 70 percent of the bandwidth), we found that RV9 was no better than its older sibling on still image or real time playback tests using high-bandwidth files.



• We found image quality at lower bandwidths slightly inferior to those produced by RV8.

• Most striking were frequent periods of jerky video, indicating many dropped frames.

• On other tests using similar procedures, we also couldn't verify that RV9 was superior to MPEG-2 at one quarter of the data rate or to at half the data rate.

• From an end user's perspective, if you are running RealPlayer or RealONEand encounter RV9 content, the player will automatically download an update from RealNetworks to play the file. This worked well on all of our test computers.

• RV9 is an important upgrade, but Microsoft is readying its next version of WMV (code-named Corona), and it seems RealNetworks works may have left room for RV9 to be topped.

Video Codecs


Transmission of video in its raw format is far too bandwidth intensive.

Software components that compress and uncompress the raw video data into smaller bitstreams whose bandwidth requirements are more manageable, are called video encoders and decoders, or simply, video Codecs.

What are Video Codecs?


Video Codecs

Lossless and Lossy

Temporal

Spatial

Asymmetrical and Symmetrical


Progressive and Interlaced ScanningPictures displayed on television screens, whether it be an old black & white set from the 40's or one of the new Plasma HDTV sets sold today, are made up of a series of horizontal lines. These lines are comprised of tiny dots, called pixels (Picture Elements).For old black and white television sets these pixels are black or whiteFor color televisions these pixels are red, blue, and green. The number of these lines and dots determine the "resolution" of the picture we see. The higher the resolution, the sharper the picture. The format of the picture you are viewing determines how these lines of dots are formatted and displayed on your TV screen.


A ‘PIXEL’ stands for ‘Picture Element’

Pixel ?

Progressive and Interlaced Scanning



Pixel ?




Pixel ?




Television pictures are created by a sequence of lines of resolution scanned and displayed in one of two different ways.

One is called ‘Progressive Scanning’ and the other is ‘Interlaced Scanning’.

Progressive Scanning creates an image by scanning horizontal lines made up of tiny dots.

These lines are scanned starting with the first line then the second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on until the entire frame is scanned.

Thirty of these frames are scanned in one second.

These frames, like the frames of a motion picture, when played back one after the other create the look of motion.



Interlaced Scanning is the other method of creating pictures on the TV Set.The current analog interlaced picture is achieved by scanning 525 horizontal lines. The total number of lines scanned to produce an image is the resolution of the system, i.e. 525i meaning, 525 lines scanned using the interlaced method. A single frame of an interlaced picture is made up by scanning the 525 lines, but not at the same time. First, the 262.5 odd numbered lines are scanned. We call that the first field of the frame. Then the 262.5 even numbered lines are scanned. This makes up the second field of the image. These two fields make up one complete frame of the image. But not all of those 525 lines actually make up the picture we see. Lines 1 thru 20 in field 1 and lines 264 thru- 283 in field 2 are reserved for signal information pertaining to picture synchronization. Therefore, only 480 of the total scan lines (240 per field) actually make up the picture.



It takes 30 frames to make up one second of television image. Most television sets and video monitors in the U.S.A. still display an image based on this 60-year-old standard set by the NTSC, (National Television Standards Committee) in 1941.Even though VHS tape players and DVD's are relative newcomers to the television arena, they playback even lower resolution than the analog television standard. DVD players only output 450 lines; while VHS players are only capable of outputting a low resolution of only 240 lines, one half the capable resolution of analog televisions.NOTE that the reference to 525 lines of resolution refers to vertical resolution. When we say that a DVD is capable of 450 lines and a VHS’s capable of 240 lines, we are actually talking about their ability to reproduce a certain number of distinct dots along the horizontal plane. They both continue to produce 525 actual lines from top to bottom. In other words, vertical resolution is always locked at 525 lines in our old NTSC format.Horizontal resolution is dependent on the equipment's ability to respond rapidly to change. VHS can only switch on an off about 240 times as the horizontal scan occurs so it is said to have 240 lines of resolution.


About Video Compression

What is compression? Essentially, it's a method of cheating. Although viewers may see what appears to be many megabytes of information per second, the stored data they're viewing is actually much smaller, thanks to the various techniques used to reduce the data required to display images and represent that information efficiently.

Compression is crucial to the video track, particularly for movies with a high frame rate. An individual full frame, full color image is about 1 MB. The video that you're used to seeing on television is about 30 frames per second. If you multiply 1 MB per second by 30 frames per second, you get 30 MB per second of video. (We could also say that the video has a data rate of 30 MB per second.) Translated into gigabytes, we're talking nearly 2 gigabytes per minute.


About Video Compression

You’d find that you’d quickly fill up even a large hard drive with data that size.

Your computer couldn't move that quantity of data to your screen quickly enough (unless you had special hardware).

Also, that's way too much data to move over modems, which have speeds of far less than 1 MB per second.

Even if you use only a portion of the screen and lower the framerate (as is done with many Internet streamed movies) without compression, it's still too much information. Thus, just about all Internet streamed video tracks are compressed in some way.


How Compressors Work

Compressors perform their jobs in two basic ways: through spatial compression and Temporal compression.

With Spatial compression, the compressor essentially throws out redundant data from individual frames

With temporal compression, the computer discards information that is repeated from one Frame to the next. This process saves a single frame in its entirety, but in subsequent frames, it saves only parts of the picture that havechanged. The first is called a Key-Frame, and the subsequent Frames are called ‘Difference Frames or Delta Frames’


How Compressors Work

There are a wide variety of compressors (Note: Compressors are also called ‘CODECS’ – for Compressor-De-compressor). If a file has been compressed, a de-compressor is necessary during playback; these are usually packaged together. Hence they are called ‘CODECS’.

Each compressor works slightly differently and is appropriate for different types of video content and delivery methods.

Usually a software package designed for preparing streaming video has many different compressors packaged with it. Some popular Codecs are show in the next slide;


Radius Cinepak

Sorenson

Lingos Indeo 5.11

Intel Indeo Video R3.2

Real Video 9

H.261& H.263

MPEG-1

MPEG-2

MPEG-4

Popular Video Compressors (Codecs)


Audio CodecsMPEG Audio (MP3)

G.723

Popular Audio Codecs


CIF, QCIF, SQCIF, 4CIF & 16CIF Sized Image Standards are;

Common Intermediate Form (CIF) Quarter CIF (QCIF)4CIF & 16CIF (High Bandwidth Video)

Full CIF (Common Intermediate Format) or CIF / FCIF has a resolution of 352 horizontal pixels by 288 vertical pixels. CIF is a popular size for desktop streaming as well as conferencing images.

Uncompressed Video, such as the a 30-frame QCIF image requires 12Mbits/sec bandwidth.

The resolution of the images during the video playback, streaming & videoconference is important. Most Codecs support one of two sizes:

What is CIF?


For lower bandwidth applications, video systems often use either QCIF (Quarter CIF) or SQCIF (Sub-Quarter CIF). QCIF (Quarter CIF) is at 176 by 144.

QCIF requires one-fourth the bandwidth of a full-screen transmission. For the most part, the smaller the image, the better the resolution. QCIF displays images at 176 pixel by 144 pixel resolution is adequate for a head shots, but it lacks the resolution needed for detailed views of an entire room.

SQCIF (Sub-Quarter CIF), which is actually one-ninth of CIF's resolution, at 128 pixels by 96 pixels.

4CIF & 16CIF; High-bandwidth Video can be described as 4CIF (704 pixels by 576 pixels) or 16CIF (1,408 pixels by 1,152 pixels).

What is CIF?


The Table (next page) shows common image sizes and color depths, as well as the worst case uncompressed bandwidth required to handle them.

The bandwidth varies widely, from 768Kbits/sec for a small, jumpy picture to more than 221Mbits/sec for a full-screen, full-motion picture.

What is CIF?


What is CIF?HORIZONTAL VERTICAL FRAME FRAME

DESCRIPTION RESOLUTION RESOLUTION PIXELS RATE BITS/SEC

4CIF 704 576

16CIF 1,048 1,152

Full Screen 640 480 307,200 15 73,728,000

Full Screen 640 480 307,200 10 49,152,000

Half Screen 452 340 153,680 15 36,883,200

Half Screen 452 340 153,680 10 24,588,800

CIF 352 288 101,376 15 24,330,240

CIF 352 288 101,376 10 16,220,160

Quarter Screen 320 240 76,800 30 36,864,000

Quarter Screen 320 240 76,800 15 18,432,000

QCIF 176 144 25,344 30 12,165,120

QCIF 176 144 24,344 15 6,082,560

Sixteenth Screen 160 120 19,200 30 9,216,000

Sixteenth Screen 160 120 19,200 15 4,608,000

SQCIF 128 96 12,288 30 5,898,030

SQCIF 128 96 12,288 15 2,949,120


For ‘still life’, one frame per day will do. It takes about a day for the fruit to get rotten, right?

For a talking head, seven frames per second seems to be about the lower bound; desktop conferencing applications have been using a variety of compromising rates above that.

For European TV, 25 frames per second is the answer, although if you've watched European TV you know that the flight of a ball is a little jagged at that rate, but almost no one cares because the difference is so negligible.

For U.S. TV, 30 frames per second is the answer. Obviously the fewer frames needed per second, the lower the bandwidth but at the cost of getting acceptable looking motion.

Frame Rate – How many frames per second?


The number of pixels in the horizontal (h) and vertical (v) dimensions of an image determine the amount of detail that can be seen in a picture, assuming a constant field of view.

But how many pixels are good enough?

1200 x 1000 or so is what folks are looking at for the basis of high definition TV (near 16 CIF)

700 x 500 for standard TV (near FCIF)

388 x 288 for video conferencing (near CIF)

194 x 144 for desktop talking heads with limited motion (near QCIF)

How much resolution?

Pixels = Picture ElementsPixels = Picture Elements


By frame quality we're talking about the ability to discern shade- the difference between two shades of gray or two shades of a color. How good is good enough? How many shades is enough?

Two (2) shades will give you presence or absence - if its dark or white you know if it's there or not.

Sixteen (16) shades will give you a discernment image but pretty ugly unless you're an artist doing it on purpose.

One hundred and twenty (120) shades is what you get on a normal computer monitor.

Two hundred and fifty (250) shades is what you get on a normal TV monitor.

Two thousand (2,000) shades is what you get on a photo print.

Frame Quality?


These are rounded estimates, but the point is, what you're used to looking at and what it gives you is different, depending on how many shades you can discern from one to the other. To understand this, look at some simple calculations.

Example 1: How much bandwidth does the standard U.S. TV picture need?

Take 30 frames per second, use 640 x 480 as the resolution, multiply that by eight shades and the result is 74 Mbits per second. That's a lot.

Example 2: How much bandwidth does the desktop videoconferencing talking head need?

Take seven frames per second, use 188 x 144 as the resolution, multiply that by six and that's 1.2 Mbits per second.

How much resolution?


Regardless of the advances in UDP and RTSP transmission protocols, streaming media would not be possible without the rapid innovation in encoding algorithms or codecs that compress and decompress audio and video data.

Uncompressed video/audio files are huge. One minute of playback of a CD-quality stereo audio file requires 10 MB of data, approximately enough disk space to capture a small library of books or a 200-page web site.

In order to stream across the limited bandwidth of the Web, video/audio has to be compressed and optimized with codecs, which are compression-decompression encoding algorithms. In general, compression schemes can be classified as "lossy" and "lossless."

Lossy Compression


Lossy compression schemes reduce file size by discarding some amount of data during the encoding process before it is sent over the Internet.

Once received on the client side, the codec attempts to reconstruct the information that was lost or discarded. The benefit to this sort of compression lies in the smaller file size that results from discarding the "lost" information.

The JPEG image format uses lossy compression to sample an image and discard unnecessary color information. Similarly, lossy video compression discards frames and lossy audio compression discards frequencies on the high and low end of the spectrum and attempts to locate and remove unnecessary audio data. The technique is oftenreferred to as "perceptual encoding" since the user is unlikely to notice the absence of this information.

Lossy compression offers file savings on the order of 10:1.

Lossy Compression


Lossless compression in contrast, squeezes data into smaller packets of information without permanently discarding any of the data.

Instead of permanently discarding information, lossless compression discards it temporarily but provides a "map" with which the codec can reconstruct the original file.

Lossless compression results in superior video/audio quality, but lower compression rates.

In the lossy example, our codec had some general rules for reconstructing the message--basically to add vowels and spaces in order to form English words.

It wasn't perfect because it didn't know which English words to choose, and it wasn't always sure where one word ended and the next began.

LossLess Compression


Lossless codecs, on the other hand, are perfect.

To reconstruct our message perfectly, however, would mean having a much more sophisticated set of rules.

A lossless text codec would have to reproduce not only words but sensible phrases. It would have to be able to break words correctly. And it would have to have a mastery of the English language's inconsistent spelling patterns.

It would in fact be, as the computer scientists say, a nontrivial endeavor.



The same goes for lossless video/audio codecs.

They are difficult to develop (and thus expensive to license), they require substantial computing power on the user's machine, and the file savings are not as great as with lossycompression.

Sadly enough, it appears that for the current time, lossycompression is necessary for knocking large video/audio files down to Internet-appropriate size.

The good news is that lossy compression schemes are becoming more advanced, and over time the differences will become less and less noticeable to the human ear.




Video Stream PruningFrame Rate

Frame Size

Spatial Resolution Quality

Color Space

Motion Compensation

Multiple-Media-Layer Transmission

Efficient Compression Technology


MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 Source Files

Compression time = Play time

Batch Re-compression to other Formats

Real-time Transcoding of FilesSupport Live Events

Support for all Client WorkstationsQuickTime, Activemovie, MPEG, etc.



Error Control & Recovery

No skipping of Audio words or phrases

No breakup of video frames

SNMP reporting of performance


Network Protocols for Streaming


Network Protocols for Streaming

UDP & Streaming Protocols

HTTP & RTSP

RTP & RTCP

ATM (CBR)


About Streaming Protocols

Although the term streaming has several definitions, many people understand it to mean that the media plays immediately rather than waiting for the file to be downloaded.

The big breakthrough that enabled the streaming revolution was the adoption of a new Internet protocol called the User DatagramProtocol (UDP) and new encoding techniques that compressed audio files into extremely small packets of data.

UDP made streaming media feasible by transmitting data more efficiently than previous protocols from the host server over the Internet to the client player or end listener.

More recent protocols such as the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) are making the transmission of data even more efficient.


UDP & Streaming Protocols

Some streaming technologies such as RealAudio and Windows Media utilize dedicated servers that support superior UDP and RTSP transmission.

Other video file formats such as Shockwave, Flash, MIDI, QuickTime, and Beatnik are primarily designed to stream from a standard HTTP web server.

While these formats are cheaper and often easier to use since they do not require the installation of a new server, they are typically not used in professional broadcasting situations that require the delivery of hundreds or thousands of simultaneous streams.

There are essentially two types of streaming for the Internet today:

HTTP Streaming

RTSP Streaming


About HTTP Streaming

HTTP streaming has been available since 1996.

With HTTP streaming, you simply put your movie files on a Web (HTTP) server as you do Web pages and image files.

Movies are downloaded in their entirety to the user's computer, where Media Players plays them.

HTTP streaming is also referred to as ‘pseudo-streaming’ because even though technically it is possible to stream via HTTP it is much more likely to cause major packet drop-outs, and it cannot deliver nearly the same amount of streams as UDP and RTSP transmission.

This is also the main difference between most low-end solutions and more professional broadcasting solutions that require dedicated servers and extra bandwidth and server capacity..


HTTP & Streaming

This method is considered to be streaming, however, because the movie can start playing before its file has been downloaded completely.

Media Players (such as QuickTime or whatever technology is being used to play the movie) determines when enough of an HTTP streaming movie has been downloaded to enable it to play continuously to the end.

Movies with very low data rates such as those that can be achieved with low data rate track types or its excellent compression technologies can begin playing immediately. (This technique sometimes is generically called progressive downloading. Another term for this is ‘Fast Start’ to refer to movies that are formatted especially for HTTP streaming.)


RSTP & Streaming

With RTSP streaming, a dedicated media server sends out movie data on an as needed basis; no file is stored on the viewer's computer. If the network is congested, preventing portions of the movie from arriving on time, RTSP will ignore the fact that data is missing. Viewers may not see or hear all the data, but what they do experience occurs at the intended time. RTSP streaming is often referred to as true streaming to contrast with HTTP streaming.


RTSP vs. HTTP Streaming

Your decision about whether to use HTTP or RTSP streaming may be determined simply by whether you have access to a Streaming server a requirement for RTSP streaming.

Even if you have access to a Streaming server, however, you need to consider other factors.

Reasons to use HTTP streaming: One advantage of HTTP streaming is that if the viewer wants to replay the data, that data doesn't need to be served over the network again; it's already on the user's hard disk. By contrast, with RTSP streaming, the data usually needs to be served over the network again if the viewer wants to replay the movie. (Some modern RTSP streaming servers, however, can keep some of the data available in the viewer's computer's memory)


Reasons to use HTTP streaming

HTTP streaming also allows you to provide higher data rate (and, thus, higher quality) files if you're willing to make users wait for enough of the file to be downloaded.

HTTP guarantees delivery of all the movie data, no matter how long it takes. With RTSP streaming, users will experience dropouts if the network can't deliver all the data on time.

In addition, only video, audio, text, music, and ‘Tween’ tracks (in-between tracks) can be streamed via RTSP.

If you have other track types (sprites or 3D, for example), you must use HTTP at least for now (You can, however, deliver a movie in which some tracks are streamed via HTTP and others via RTSP)


Reasons to use RTSP streaming

RTSP streaming is usually a better choice for movies that are longer than a few minutes. HTTP streaming can be a problem for lengthy movies, because viewers must have enough room on their local hard disk to store the file; with RTSP streaming, no file is downloaded. Also, with a lengthy RTSP movie, if viewers want to jump ahead, they can do so and will have to wait only a second or so (or even less if the "Instant On" feature is enabled) for the stream to restart from that point. HTTP streaming prevents users from accessing portions of the clip randomly until the file has been downloaded.Furthermore, because no file is copied to the viewer's hard disk, RTSP streaming is preferable if you are concerned about copy protection.Finally, you must use RTSP streaming if you want to broadcast video live.


RTP - Real Time Transport Protocol

RTP - The Real-Time Transport Protocol is the IETF's standard for transporting real-time data, such as voice and video, over a packet-based network that doesn't guarantee Quality of Service (QOS).

A related standard is RTCP, or the Real-Time Transport Control Protocol, which provides feedback between two units (point-to-point) or a larger group (known as multicast or multipoint).

The ITU-T's non-QOS multimedia standards such as H.323 and H.324 are based on RTP/RTCP.

Role of Networks, Protocols &Video Encoding Standards


Video Streaming Categories?PTP

VOD

Live Broadcast

IP

ATM

POTS

LAN PTMMTM

Networ

k &

Enc

odin

g

VOD = Video-On-DemandPTP = Point-to-PointPTM = Point-to-MultipointMTM = Multipoint-to-Multipoint

Video Conference

Video Transmission Modes


Why are Standards, Openness, and Interoperability?

The reason for the standard is to enable interoperability between different vendors' implementations of these components.

As is the case with all standards, there is a danger of either over-specification or under-specification. If the standard is over-specified, it may become difficult to implement in the form of a cost-effective product. If the standard is under-specified, there may be room for different interpretations that lead to equally compliant yet non-interoperable implementations.

A Standard is an umbrella that specifies mandatory and optionalrequirements in several areas to enable a complete communication sequence.

Fortunately, market forces have resulted in several strategic partnerships among video streaming vendors which will tend to increase interoperability in this arena. In some cases vendors have sought to acquire complementary products in order to offer complete "turnkey" solutions. In others, joint ventures have been formed to assure interoperability within a broader product line.


Why are Standards, Openness, and Interoperability?

Video streaming standards specify the who, what, where, when, why and how of installing and delivering compressed video network.

Protocol Stacks are the underlining technology that allow communication between each of the functional blocks of a Video Network.

A protocol stack implementation consists of a set of software libraries that a developer would use to build applications. Indeed, they are the "building blocks" of all networks and connectivity.

Like protocol stacks, video Codecs that adhere to the ITU-T international standards insure complete interoperability with other products. (H.261, H.263, H.263+, MPEG-1,MPEG-2 and MPEG-4)


H.261 compression standard (Video Codec Standard)H.261 was designed for use with ISDN and assumes data rates in multiples of 64Kbits/sec. It is an ITU-T Video-Compression Codec (Coder-Decoder) standard. H.261 is a Video Compression standard for bandwidth multiples of 64Kbits/sec.

H.261 supports CIF and QCIF images. It is supported by H.320, H.323, and H.324.

H.261 is the video compression standard used in H.320 (ISDN) and H.323 (IP) and H.324 (POTS).

H.261 & H.263 Video Compression Standard


H.261 compresses data by using a variety of encoding schemes tailored for;

Processing Power

Available Bandwidth

Desired Video Quality

H-263 is best for slow modems, at around 10Kbites/sec and 160 pixels to 120 pixels; variable frame rates depend on desired transmission quality.

H.261 & H.263 Video Codecs


For comparison purposes, consider the following;

MPEG-1 was designed for about 150Kbites/sec, with 320 pixels by 240 pixels at 30 frames/sec. (“Pixel” means a “Picture Element”)

MPEG-2 is best for around 400Kbites/sec to 800Kbites/sec with full television-quality video.

If left uncompressed (not encoded), the same 15 frames/sec of QCIF video would require 3,041Kbits/sec, and the audio would need another 88Kbits/sec.



MPEG-4 video and MPEG Layer-3 Audio Codecs in NetMeeting 2.0 software can handle the following Frames/sec (Fps);

– 5 Fps to 10 Fps using a 28.8Kbit/secmodem

– 10 to 15 Fps using 56Kbit/secISDN

– 15 Fps on a typical 10BaseTswitched LAN

If left uncompressed (not encoded), the same 15 frames/sec of QCIF video would require 3,041Kbits/sec, and the audio would need another 88Kbits/sec.



H.261 is for use with communication channels that are multiples of 64 kbps (P=1, 2, 3 thru 30), the same data structure as ISDN; Hence H.261 is often known as Px64.

Unlike JPEG and MPEG, which are 'Resolution' and 'Image-Size' independent, H.261 specifies two image sizes:

Common Interchange Format (CIF), 352 x 288 Quarter CIF (QCIF), 176 x 144

Like MPEG, H.261 encoding is DCT-based. (Discrete Coding Technique).



H.261 calls for fully-encoding only certain frames.

Instead of required motion estimation and its severe computational load, H.261 codes only the difference between a frame and the previous frame.

Motion compensation, which is an H.261 option, involves working with groups of pixels (16x16 macro-blocks) to identify a group in the previous frame that best matches a group in the current frame, coding the difference along with a vector that describes the offset (movement) of that group.

The remaining data is entropy coded.



While both MPEG and H.261 use motion estimation to reduce temporal redundancy, they differ in their approach. MPEG's design center is to maintain picture quality with maximum compression.

H.261 was originally intended for telephony minimizes encoding and decoding delay while achieving a fixed data rate.

H.261 implementations allow a tradeoff between 'Frame Rate' and'Picture Quality'.

To design an H.261 codec covering the full scope of the standard, i.e. 30 fps with full motion estimation and loop filtering, the video codec subsystem must be able to execute approximately eight billion operations/sec (Gbps). Most of this is for motion estimation.

It is possible to reduce the number of operations required at the expense of picture quality. H.261 provides a measure of compatibility across many of the different ITU recommendations



H.263 compression standard

H.263 is a newer standard which improves H.261's efficiency and adds support for SQCIF-, 4CIF-, and 16CIF-sized images. H.263 is a backward compatible refinement of H.261

H.263 is an alternative compression standard for low bit rate-communications. Although H.261 is included in the standard, H.263 is commonly used since it can compress video for very low bit rate transmission.

H.263 picture quality is greatly improved by using a required ½ pixel motion estimation technique rather than the optional integer estimation used in H.261.

Half pixel techniques are noticeably superior with low resolution images (SQCIF). In addition, the 'Huffman Coding' table used in H.263 is optimized for low bit rate transmissions (28.8 kbps).



New in H.263 are 'PB Frames' which consist of two pictures being coded as one unit.

The name PB comes from the MPEG lexicon where there are P-pictures and B-pictures, because parts of it may be bi-directionally predicted from the past and future P-pictures. With this coding option, the frame rate can be increased considerably without increasing the bit rate significantly.

According to most independent observers, H.263 outperforms H.261 by a wide margin in terms of video quality per bit transmitted, certainly for bit-streams below 1,000Kbps. Above this rate, H.261 still holds an advantage.

Estimates provided by developers at Lucent Technologies indicate that H.263 is 40-50% computationally more demanding than H.261 at the same image size and frame rate.



While the H.263 coder defines five (5) standardized picture formats: sub-QCIF, QCIF, CIF, 4CIF and 16CIF, three are of prime interest to the desktop video streaming market.

CIF and QCIFare defined in H.261. H.263 adds SQCIF



MPEG : Moving Pictures Experts Group. It is a group that is working to establish a standard for compressing and storing motion video and animation in digital form. The acronym can also refer to the standard under development by this group.

MPEG-1MPEG –1 runs at 800Kbps to about 2.5Mbps; (1.5Mbps MPEG-1 stream is equivalent to a standard VHS video with a 44-kHz stereo soundtrack).

MPEG-1 is used Primarily for training (CD-Video standard)

MPEG-1 editors can edit MPEG-1 files for either IBP Frames or just IFrames (IFrames are Key Frames..you can have every 1 sec or 2 seconds etc.). IBP Frames editing on the other hand requires re-compressing and re-arranging the rest of the frames

Standard size (Video CD) 352 x 288 Pixels Size 10 meg per min

Web Size (150 bit rate) 160 x 120 Pixels

MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 Video Standard


MPEG-2MPEG-2 Coder/Decoder (Codec) stands close to the top, with bit rates from 1.5Mbps to 40Mbps; The maximum throughput of an UDP/IP and TCP/IP Stacks has been tested at 70Mbps. MPEG-2 is used for Entertainment & Movies (DVD Video Standard)Standard Size 720 x 576 Size (Compressed) 120 Meg per second Standard Size 720 x 576 Size (Full quality) 540 Meg per second

MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 Video Standard


MPEG-4 provides standardized ways to support;

Coding;Representing units of audio, visual, or audiovisual content, called media objects. These media objects are natural or synthetic in origin, meaning they could be recorded with a camera or microphone, or generated with a computer.

Composition;Describing the composition of these objects to create compound media objects that form audiovisual scenes.

MultiplexMultiplexing and synchronizing the data associated with media objects for transport over network channels providing a QoSappropriate for the nature of the specific media objects.

MPEG-4 Video Standard




Interaction: Interacting with the Audio-Visual scene at the receiver's end or, via a back channel, at the transmitter's end. The structure of the MPEG-4 standard consists of six parts:

– Systems– Visual– Audio– Conformance Testing– Reference Software– Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework (DMIF)




• MPEG-4 leading features are the object-oriented compression method for video and an increased compression rate.

• Compared to MPEG-1, this method reduces the data volume following compression by 30% with comparable picture quality, making it possible to handle video on networks operating at tens and hundreds of kilobits/second.



This table displays the individual MPEG technologies. The fact that MPEG-4 runs at a low data rate despite offering a high resolution is quite noticeable.



A movie sequence from a DVD generally comes in MPEG-2 format. This part is from the movie blockbuster "Matrix" and played back on the Mediaplayer.



This is the same video sequence in MPEG-4 format. Differences in quality are hardly noticeable, even though the data volume is only about 1/11 the size of the original MPEG-2 video.


MPEG-4 comes with a few important improvements compared to the older and established video compression technologies like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2:

Independent encoding of pictures and video

Increased encoding efficiency, more efficient compression of pictures, video and textures

Very variable resolutions

Scalable complexity

Extended error correction

Increased flexibility for object-based encoding

Small buffer delay

Global Motion Compensation (GMC)

Content-dependent scalability of textures



• Similar to MPEG-2, MPEG-4 also consists of different profiles.

• This allows adapting the audio/video stream to the actual application.

• MPEG-4 takes into account the special requirements from the computer, telecommunication and television areas.

• It encodes not only rectangular pixels but also individual objects of a scene.

• Here is a little example: A vehicle drives in front of a specific background that hardly changes.

• While the whole picture is encoded in many rectangular images, the vehicle can be separated as an object and treated as a sprite in front of a fixed background.



QuickTime Video Standard

• Apple’s QuickTime is the third format most commonly found on the Internet

• QuickTime files are popular because of the format's mature authoring tools, and they have long been available on the Web for download via FTP or HTTP.

• With Apple’s 'OS X' QuickTime Streaming Server, QuickTime has stepped up to true streaming (and live broadcasting) via RTP and RTSP.

• According to Apple, the server software, installed on the recommended 400MHz Macintosh Server G3, can support as many as 1,000 simultaneous users.


ATM, which has yet to make serious inroads in the network environment, serves as a WAN transport that facilitates Broadcast Video through the creation of private virtual circuits with guaranteed bandwidth QoS.

ATM -based Video Streaming


Voice/Video – Quality of Service

Quality of Service (QOS)- provides the network the ability to reserve fixed amounts of bandwidth on demand for specific applications.

Class of Service (COS) – allows for the prioritization of traffic but does

not guarantee a fixed amount of bandwidth


G.711, G.722, G.728 - are Audio Compression Standards which are used by H.32x Protocol Stack.

G.711, is one of the major ITU-T codec (Coder-Decoder) standards for Audio (Voice and Music).

G.711 can be incorporated into broader multimedia standards, such as H.320 (ISDN) and H.323 (IP), or used on its own for computer telephony.

It specifies an audio signal with a 3.4KHz bandwidth (that is, an ordinary analog voice signal) over a 64Kbit/sec data path.

G.711 is the Basic Audio Compression at 48Kbit/sec to 64Kbit/sec -Low computation pulse code modulation technique same as used in regular telephony.

G.711, G.722, G.728 Audio Compression Standards


G.711, G.722 and G.728 related standards include;

G.722, which defines a 64kbit/sec 7.0KHz bandwidth audio stream.G.722 is Higher quality audio at the same bandwidths using more sophisticated audio processing.

G.723, which supports a compressed 3.4KHz signal over a POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) line and is used in the H.324 multimedia standard. G.723 is Audio compression for 5.3Kbit/sec and 6.5Kbit/sec. G.723 in H.324 incorporates only low bit rate audiocompression V.80 standard application interface for developing H.324 systems that convert synchronous data streams to modem asynch, enable rate adjustments during a call, and notify client software of lost packets.

G.728, the lower-bandwidth standard, which defines a 16Kbit/sec 3.4KHz audio stream. For computer-based audio over narrow-band phone lines. G.728 Lower bit rate audio compression - 16 Kbps.

G.711, G.722, G.728 Audio Compression Standards


IP Multicast

IP multicasting Allows all users of a network to listen to a single live stream, making efficient use of network resources.

Multicasting avoids delivering numerous simultaneous point-to-point connections by broadcasting one stream to a certain point in the network where other users are requesting the same file.

Multicasting is ideal for reducing server load and bandwidth congestion during live broadcasts.


IP Multicast

IP multicast is a suitable advanced application.

IP multicast has a proven track record as a success in the commercial space.

It is designed from the get-go to easily scale to support Corporate locations + sized audiences


Once Native IP Multicast Is Enabled, “It Just Works”

IP multicast is simple and therefore once installed, IP multicast applications will“just work”

Example: Cisco’s IP/TV IP multicast video viewer, delivering TV-quality video over existing LANs to vanilla Windows desktops


Multicast Gotchas

Firewalls often interact poorly with IP multicast traffic

Content, content, content. As always, finding interesting and relevant content which can lawfully be distributed can be a challenge.


A Successful Video Streaming System

This means rich, "Full-Duplex" Audio with no 'Echo' or noticeable 'Delays'.

Video quality is a function of;– Frame Rate – Pixel Resolution– Monitor Size

Video should be;– clear with rich colors, – free of jerky movement– free of ghosting– free of freeze frames– free of any other visual anomalies






Digital Video Asset Management Systems


• Numerous components can make up an end-to-end Digital Video Asset-Management System.

• Emphasis on scalable, open architecture that allows users to customize systems and link together tools from a wide range of companies.

• When choosing such a system, facilities will want to consider all or some of the following:

Video Asset management Components


• Ingestion of video material (robotic or manual digitization)

• Video logging (via software or manually)

• Indexing and cataloging metadata (via software or manual methods, usually based on one or more of the major database architectures such as IBM, Informix, or Oracle)

• Search and retrieval tools (online or private network tools featuring robust search engines permitting quick and easy accessto still photos, actual clips, or video proxies with or without timecode, and related metadata)



• Distribution capabilities (via various networks, including the Web and intranets, or distribution via print media, film, data tape, videotape, CD-ROM, or DVD)

• Business services and applications (tools to permit purchase offootage, rights acquisition, royalty, or licensing information)

• Password-based security protection

• Asset protection via watermarks and hidden data



• Investing in digital storage and management technology has become a major consideration in the broadcast industry.

• Many traditional broadcast companies realize that in order to remain competitive, they must adapt to change and recognize the value of digital product management and distribution.

• Digitizing media content also means managing and organizing and managing enormous amount of data.

• It is estimated that the worldwide broadcast market was worth $4.1 billion in 1999, and is expected to grow to $6 billion by 2003.

Video Asset Management for Broadcast


• For the broadcast industry, it is important to have the ability to record, store, manipulate, annotate, edit, distribute, share, and display visual data.

• Resolving this digital product challenge can create significantprofit opportunities in the form of increased productivity, streamlined workflows, and new revenue streams through transforming old or archived content into new products.

• As a result, most new technology investment for a broadcast company goes to supporting asset management and distribution. Among 47 U.S. and European broadcasters polled by Dataquest in 1998, end users were spending an average of $12.37 million on the hardware, software, and services to implement a digital asset management system.

Video Asset Management for Broadcast


• Companies in the entertainment industry already produce vast amounts of content to make movies, TV programs, animated features, and short films.

• In this highly competitive industry, market leaders are lookingto Video asset management as a means of ensuring competitive advantage.

• By digitizing this content and incorporating digital asset management into their workflow, entertainment companies can move into a new digital arena that will enable them to enhance their value proposition.

Video Asset Management for Entertainment


• As the entertainment industry relies increasingly on digital technology, dedicated investment in digital asset management has grown exponentially.

• Dataquest estimates that in the U.S. alone, total IT spending on digital asset management by entertainment companies will grow to $137 million by 2003.

• Digital asset management was also noted as the second fastest-growing application technology in the entertainment industry.

Video Asset Management for Entertainment


• Printing and publishing companies are investing in digital asset management and distribution to support web-based product creation, distribution and business-to-business supply chains.

• Consumer demand for traditional print media has waned over the past couple of years, and the industry has been forced to look at alternative business strategies in order to remain profitable.

• Because of the popularity of the Internet, advertising budgets are being re-allocated from traditional print channels to Web-based sources.

• In addition, even traditional publishing houses are using the Internet as a means of distributing content.

Video Asset Management for Publishing


• According to Dataquest, the areas of highest budgetary growth in printing and publishing companies are those that support the creation, management and distribution of digital content over the Web.

• In 1999, 38% of all corporate spending in the U.S. printing and publishing industry was used to install media asset management systems that would allow the production of content in a Web-based environment.

Video Asset Management for Corporate Use


• Regardless of the nature of their business, most modern organizations are in possession of content-based assets that are integral to their business processes.

• The growing wealth of multimedia information that companies in all industries possess has resulted in a demand for digital asset management and distribution technology that fits varied vertical markets.

• As marketing, sales, corporate presentations and other communications rely increasingly on multimedia and Internet-based applications, the IT departments of many companies have come to recognize the value of digital asset management.

• This reality is exemplified in Dataquest's E-digital software market report, which estimated a 63.4 per cent growth rate for the digital media asset management market between 1998 and 1999.

Video Asset Management for Corporate Use


• As the concept of digital asset management slowly seeps into the consciousness of corporate America, the television-broadcast industry stands as the textbook example of why digital asset management are necessary.

• After all, at exactly the point in history in which the Internet and broadband technology have entered the broadcast equation, traditional broadcasters find themselves owning huge repositories of videotapes, in all formats, along with the computer files, still photos, and documents containing information about those images that are defined as metadata.

• Broadcasters now have major potential to re-purpose such materials for broadcast in other mediums - if they have control over their content libraries.

Video Asset Control for Broadcasters


Broadcasters large and small are exploring various strategies that will allow them to sort through Video media assets (which exist mostly on videotape), move them into the digital world, and thenexploit them in new venues as quickly as possible. Manufacturers are offering dozens of potential solutions. Companies including;

• IBM• Informix• The Bulldog Group • Virage • eMotion (the company resulting from the recent merger of Cinebase Software with Picture Network International) • Excalibur • Artesia Technologies • Imagine Products



• Several others are offering software-management packages and, in some cases, a wide range of additional tools and services designed to address the depth and breadth of the digital asset-management issue.

• Some broadcasters are combining these tools with more narrowly focused technology-including the robust database options that Oracle, Informix, and IBM offer-and digitizing and video-logging technology, such as Virage's line of products.



Finding Needles in a Haystack

• Web search engines will help you find text information quickly.Want a recipe for chocolate cake? Search for “chocolate cake” at www.yahoo.comor www.google.com. You get 294,000 matches.

• What if you want to see and hear Julia Child actually bake a chocolate cake? For that, you need a special search engine thatindexes the Audio, Text and Visual aspects of Video so you can find the show and clip you want



• You need video indexing software and a video search engine. Asvideo increasingly replaces text on the Internet and private Intranets, such search engines will become a necessity.

• For example, the video search engine at ww.pbs.org/juliachild/video.htmlwill sift through hundreds of hours of Julia child’s cooking shows.

• It lets you search by category, ingredients, guest chef and keywords. You can actually find and watch Julia squeak, “Heavens to Betsy- I could never make anything like that!



• Video indexing software has two major uses. The most common is indexing and streaming searchable video to the Web and company Intranets.

• This breathes new live (and revenue) into millions of hours of old TV shows, news footage, movies, sports events, music videos and corporate training and marketing videos.

• The other use is digitizing and cataloging film and video for television stations, movie studios, advertising agencies, companies, museums and institutions.



• A third use will be Video-on-Demand. Cable and satellite TV customers will use video indexing and search engine software to order up video.

• Video indexing software and services were less than $30 millionof the $300 million digital media management market in 1999.

• They will grow to over $720 million of the $2.8 billion industry in 2003.



• Video indexing and streaming is complex.

• Digital video devours bandwidth. Each second of broadcast quality video has 30 frames.

• Each frame is 1 megabyte, for a total of 30 megabytes per second.

• Indexing the audio, visual and text of each frame requires intelligent software and powerful computers.


How Video Indexing Works

• Before video can be indexed and published to the Web, a PC digitizes it.

• The video enters the PC through a Video Digitizing and encodinginterface card such as one made by Avid (AVID). Software turns the analog signal into digital bits.

• Next, the digital bits are converted into a rich media file.

• Rich media is the catchall term for ultra-dense audio and video files that allow for user interaction, advanced cataloging and streaming.



• The most popular rich media formats are:

• Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Media Player• Real Networks (RNWK) Real Player• Apple (AAPL) Quick-Time Player

• These formats are not broadcast quality.

• To achieve broadcast quality over the Internet, you need a format called MPEG-2.

• Video-on-demand (VoD) uses MPEG-2.



• Once in rich media format, video indexing software breaks the video into scenes based on cuts and fades.

• It separates the video track from the audio track and closed captioning.

• Then it time codes and matches the audio and each line of closed captioning to the specific scene and moment of the video



• Indexing and streaming video can be for anything from for corporate conference calls, road shows, lectures, training sessions, etc.

• Analyzes the video with object recognition and character facialidentification scanners is the next step.

• It analyzes the closed captioning with optical character recognition.

• If the video isn’t closed captioned, a speech-to-text program creates a script for the video.

• Voice recognition scans the audio track for particular voices.



• The information gathered from these audio and video scans becomes metadata, a laundry list of concepts and keywords that are used to retrieve the video or specific clips.

• A video search engine is only as good as its metadata.

• To make the video more searchable, a human operator often adds metadata unavailable from the video, audio or closed captioning scans.



• The indexing portion of the software catalogs and stories the metadata on a separate searchable database.

• The rich media file goes on a content distribution network server for later retrieval and streaming.

• To retrieve a clip, users enter keywords in the search engine.

• The keywords are compared to the metadata. When words match, the software extracts the corresponding clip, synchs the audio track and streams it to the PC.



• An example is that of Virage VideoLogger is a popular video indexing software.

• Virage software was developed at MIT Media Lab.

• VideoLogger uses IBM (IBM) speech recognition technology and Stanford Research Institute’s optical character recognition technology.


What is SMIL?

• The G2 server and client pioneered the use of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard that is related to Extensible Markup Language (XML). SMIL is a format for integrating independent multimedia objects into a single multimedia presentation, with coherent temporal and spatial attributes.

• To achieve this goal, SMIL provides techniques for temporal composition (synchronization), spatial composition (layout), and association of hyperlinks.

• All the descriptors in the SMIL specification follow an HTML-like format. These syntax elements provide an extension on top of HTML and Extended Markup Language (XML) that tells the browser how to position in time and space, and how to link to other content.



• SMIL was defined as an extension of XML to specifically addressthe issue of presenting content comprising several independent media objects.

• Some major differences distinguish SMIL and MPEG-4. SMIL assumes media objects are in separate URLs, specifies synchronization at the stream level (beginning and end of a stream, leaving the fine-grain synchronization to the browser implementation), and provides no explicit support for 3D objects.


What is BHTML?

• BHTML is the extension to HTML being specified by the ATSC, the committee for digital ‘Broadcasting’ of the United States Federal Communication Commission.

• The comparison with MPEG-4 is interesting, since while BHTML is specifically designed for applications like "interactive digital TV with browsing functionality," the MPEG-4 specification is an alternative candidate for the same application.

• The approach taken by BHTML somewhat resembles that of SMIL. Typical HTML content is complemented by (discrete or continuous) media objects embedded in the same presentation.



• Since the specification is intended for Web navigation on digital TV platforms, a better definition exists of how to synchronize the continuous media streams (like audio and video) to the other media objects in the scene.

• For example, the synchronization attributes specify whether several objects shall have a sequential or parallel presentation and, further, what primitive must be used to perform synchronization (clock, frame, or "soft" synchronization by the implementation).

•Also different from SMIL, BHTML is being designed specifically to downscale HTML and XML for other aspects considered less compelling for digital TV.


FULL MOTION VIDEO SERVICES PROVIDER

• A one-stop shop for full motion video streaming. Help clients through all phases of delivering video on-line over intranets and the Internet. This includes;

• Capturing • Converting • Compressing • Storing • Streaming (sending media over a network) • Decoding and Playback on end-user machines

• Because the intended use of the delivered media varies for eachclient and there is no universal standard for encoding, they work closely with firms that specialize in encoding who have the expertise to “tweak” video signals as they are being converted and compressed.


VIDEO HOSTING & DISTRIBUTION

• For Hosting and Distribution, they have a State-of-the-Art Data Center with the latest Hardware and Software.

• A NOC (Network Operations Center) is equipped with a complete set of ‘Network Management’ tools that are used to anticipate bandwidth requirements and provide access to additional bandwidth as needed.

• As part of Internet Services, there is qualified in-house expertise and resources so that customers do not have to worry about systems maintenance and other support issues.


Video Service Providers

RELIABLE STREAMING • The Company’s services rely on major audio and video formats. This allows managed data-transmission traffic regardless of the end-user (client) modem speed. The transmission automatically downshifts depending on traffic between the Server and the clients computer.

INTELLIGENT VIDEO SEARCHES• A Video-searching software enables clients to search for relevant video clips by typing in key-words. The user types a key word on the screen, and frames representing distinct segments of the video are called-up. This feature keeps users from having to watch an entire video to find relevant clips. The video source is indexed and encoded in a single process.


Video-On-Demand Providers

• Sony has tested its broadband movie-delivery service on both DSL lines and cable with a trial group of U.S. consumers.

• Unlike several other Internet video offerings, the Sony servicewill allow users to download and temporarily store films in their computers rather than view them as they stream through Internet connections.

• Customers will pay for a set period of access to the movie, after which they would have to pay more to keep it longer. Films will be delivered to a user's computer in a format that isprogrammed to become unusable after an agreed-to period.




How Video Caching & Distribution Works


Cisco BPX 8650 ATMCisco BPX 8650 ATM

(LSR)(LSR)

Cisco 7200(LSC)

ADIC AML Library

EMC Storage

Los Angeles

Fibre to ATM

Los Angeles, CaLos Angeles, Ca

Cisco BPX 8650 ATMCisco BPX 8650 ATM

(LSR)(LSR)

Cisco 7200Label Switch Controller (LSC)(Assigns VPI/VCI) to Cisco BPX

ADIC AML

Library

EMC Storage

Malaysia

Fibre to ATM

KL, MalaysiaKL, Malaysia

Example of Bulk Data and Video Transfers

100’s of TV Broadcast Video, Film, Hi-Resolution Graphic files, Medical Images & Cad Drawings Moved/Replicated

Long Haul Connection

(PTP or ATM)

Video Streaming

Questions & Answers

Documents

Introduction to Video Streaming