Streaming Learning Center

This is another installment in our series of "What Is...?" articles, designed to offer definitions, history, and context around significant terms and issues in the online video industry.

Here's an except from my (Jan Ozer) new book, Video Compression for Flash, Apple Devices and HTML5.

It’s important to recognize that when you deliver video over the Internet, you have multiple options, including streaming, progressive download and adaptive streaming. Note that the mode you choose may have a significant impact on how you produce your files.

Click over to the main article to read more.

Codecs are the oxygen of the streaming media market; no codecs, no streaming media. From shooting video to editing to encoding our streaming media files for delivery, codecs are involved every step of the way. Many video producers also touch the DVD-ROM and Blu-ray markets, as well as broadcast, and codecs play a role there as well. 

Though you probably know what a codec is, do you really know codecs? Certainly not as well as you will after reading this article. First we’ll cover the basics regarding how codecs work, then we’ll examine the different roles performed by various codecs. Next we’ll examine how H.264 became the most widely used video codec today, and finish with a quick discussion of audio codecs.

An explanation of HTML5 and HTML5 Video, including history, patent issues, and current use by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and others.

HTML5 rocketed to the forefront with Apple’s decision to forgo Flash and use HTML5 technology to deliver video to the iPad. Actual HTML5 usage, however, has been slowed by low HTML5-compatible browser penetration, the need to encode video into two or three formats for complete HTML5 compatibility, and the lack of feature parity with Flash, the predominant plug-in based technology for viewing video on the web.

HTML5 needs to be on the radar screen of all streaming media producers, but switching over to HTML5 does not appear to be a short-term priority as of this writing.

A high-level view of streaming media technology, history, and the online video market landscape.

Streaming producers don’t work in a vacuum, and one of the best ways to understand the best practices of other publishers on the web is to download and analyze the streaming files that they produce. I capture streaming videos a lot, exclusively to analyze the video files for research purposes. I use two primary tools to accomplish this, DownloadHelper (www.downloadhelper.net), which is available exclusively as a FireFox plug-in, and RealPlayer (www.RealPlayer.com), which works with any browser.This short article discusses these tools and features.

I was reading through some material on Adobe's web site (specifically, here) and noticed the following table, which I've copied verbatim, along with the explanatory note. Citing an August, 2008 IDC study that's referenced below, the table states that 94% of all consumers polled by IDC had downstream bandwidth sufficient to retrieve and play a streaming video file produced at 1200 kbps. In addition, 69% of all viewers could retrieve a 2400 kbps file.

I figured it was worth a post, because most sites that I've reviewed are producing at much lower bitrates than even 1200 kbps. If you haven't reviewed your streaming parameters recently, perhaps these stats wil provide some motivation. As they say, either go big, or don't go at all.

* Note: Based on the IDC 2008 Consumer Panel Broadband Survey. Each figure represents the percentage of users who have the bandwidth to support the respective total bit rate in that category. For example, 25% of users have bandwidth of at least 1200 Kbps to support the D1 video type but don't have the higher bandwidth needed to support the next higher bit rate of 1800 Kbps.