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Almost everyone involved in Internet content development will tell you that there is a decidedly arcane nature to video streaming. Because of the different steps involved (see flowchart, below) and the rapid advance in the technology, the more you know, the better the results will be.
What is Streaming
The term refers to content which is moved in realtime over the Internet from a Web server, or servers, to a web client (browser) which reads the content with a player plug-in. Content can be viewed either "inline" (on a Web page), or in a pop-up type helper application like QuickTime Player, or RealPlayer. Unlike television which is broadcast over the air in a one-to-many form, streaming content is more difficult because it is one-to-one. Each viewer is connected on the network to the content file itself. The benefits are the promise of real interactivity because you're connected to the content, while the downside for providers is that each "viewer" requires system resources to maintain the connection to the content.
Shown above: sample streaming media production and delivery flowchart.
The Basics
Essentially, there are two types of video streaming. First, "on demand" sometimes called http-streaming because it uses the Web server to push the content without any special software. Second, there is "live" streaming which will most likely use the RTSP (realtime streaming protocol). Examples would be most movie trailers previews or MP3 audio files online are "on demand," while the Webcast of Steve Jobs' opening keynote speech at MacWorld Expo would be a "live" stream (often called "true streaming" because the video is being shot, captured, compressed, and served, in near-realtime). "Live" is much more complex and outside the scope of this article.
Starting with Content
Obviously in order to put video onto the Web for whatever purpose be it advertising or entertainment, you need to start with the content itself. This starts with shooting film or video, and editing it as you would normally as if the Internet did not exist. Luckily for those with experience with converting video for use on CD-ROM, it's not a great leap to convert content to the Web. Here is where pre-planning comes into play. If you know your content is going to be used online, you may need to shoot elements a bit closer and avoid shots like close-ups of somebody reading a letter to tell parts of a story. When the online version is typically 1/8th the size of a 13" TV, you need to consider that size does matter.
Ethan Becker, Founder of Icanstream.com, adds these observations, "The challenge is not 'gotchas' during the conversion process, but during the creation process. If you know you are creating for the web, pay attention to things like steady camera, and stay away from complex background patterns, they don't play well with compression. Carefully planned content will look fabulous on the web."
John Geyer, VP of Product Marketing at Terran Interactive, which makes Media Cleaner Pro, adds that. other things to watch out for are, "having good lighting and basically understanding that the better the source, the better the stream. Another biggie is
that video captured on Mini-DV is often interlaced, and needs to be de-interlaced for good streaming."
Geyer notes that, "One of the most difficult hurdles is for content creators is understanding the whole camera-to-web workflow: how to shoot for the web, encode, and publish video into Websites." Knowing the audience is equally important. "Another big hurdle is anticipating how the end user is viewing the stream, to know which formats and at what speeds to deliver the video in."
What is Needed
In order to do streaming online, you need to have your content, as well as a selection of hardware and software. If you're shooting miniDV you likely only need a product like Terran Interactive's Media Cleaner Pro 5 which does both capture of miniDV via FireWire (using a supplied helper application from DigitalOrigin), as well as compression to standard Web formats.
The steps to streaming content include capture, which means to copy the content off of another medium like a video camera/tape. Once captured, you need to either edit it to the desired length, or capture only the portion you want to put online. Most compression tools don't include editing tools (like iMovie, or Adobe Premiere), but do include tools for correcting gamma and sharpness.
You need a lot of hard drive space because capturing a 5 minute film at a reduced size like 240x180 pixels results in a 10MB file. Capturing a 9-minute, full-screen video from miniDV will use about 2GB of space. Ideally you should capture video at full screen or half-screen and allow the compression software to reduce the size of the image. Additionally, since most computer operating systems have a file size limit (typically 2GB maximum) you need to consider video capture tools which can grab "chunks" of video, then save them as a project to be imported into an editing system, and/or to be compressed.
