What is Streaming Media?Streaming media is scary. Despite the ever growing use of streaming media, I still find a great deal of intimidation in Web producers when it comes to working with streaming media. HTML seems easier to understand than transmitting an audio or video signal to the other side of the world. In their mind, streaming media borders on pure wizardry. But streaming media is easy. These days, it is simple to create and to implement in your Web site. In fact most producers will find it far less intimidating than their first work with HTML or JavaScript. The only challenge is in understanding the range of choices and directions the streaming media industry offers. So what is streaming media? Let's start at the beginning. What is streaming media? To understand the role of streaming media, you need to understand the functioning of the World Wide Web. Web servers are often described as "stateless." What that basically means is that the Web server takes a request for information, pushes that information out the door as fast as it can, completes the transaction, disconnects, and goes on to other requests by other users. On the client side, your Web browser takes the information it receives, assembles it on the screen, and then ignores the the Web server until you click on a link. In all, Web transactions between the server and client are pretty much like the end of the evening in a singles bar. A quick exchange and a rapid parting in the morning. This stateless approach works very well for media like graphics and text. Feed them into the browser and simply slap them on the screen. But moving images and sound are problematic. Unlike a graphic, video, animation, and sound have a time element to them. With that time dimension, often comes a larger file size. Under the stateless approach, a Web user would need to download the entire video clip before it can be viewed. But with the large file size that comes with even a short video clip, the wait becomes unbearable. Another solution is needed. Enter streaming media. With streaming media the goal is to bypass the limitations of the World Wide Web. Using Internet based technologies that are mostly proprietary, media data is fed to the user as the media is viewed. So rather than a stateless data connection, streaming media is more of a continuous connection. There is a commitment there. Much like TV or listening to the radio, you receive the images or audio just before you see or hear them. Paced out over time, the file size of the clip becomes less of an issue. But that is not to say that it is not still an issue. The reality is that raw file sizes for digital audio and video are absolutely huge. So to get them down to a size that works for a modem or LAN, compression is used. The goal of streaming compression is to throw away data that you don't need. That makes the file size much smaller. But it also begins to degrade the image and sound. So much like other Internet based forms of delivery, working with streaming media is all about compromises. How much data can you throw away and still find the media streaming cleanly to a modem or LAN user? Who does the best job of throwing away that data and maintaining the integrity of the clip? How can you get more out of the compression? If you're asking these questions, I know I have you hooked for the next several weeks. Quality? Formats? The Future? What about quality? Media producers, especially those with television backgrounds, often criticize the quality of streaming media. They miss the whole point. Streaming media isn't about quality. It's about access. It's about being able to sit in an office in Paris and receive content on-demand from Anchorage. Surprisingly, most Internet users do get the point. Throughout the history of all forms of media, the new medium has often paled in comparison to the old one. But the new medium offers some capability that the old one does not. With streaming media, it is all about the access. The pictures may be fuzzy and the sound occasionally garbled. But when a Web user clicks on that link and gets media on-demand, that is power. Fortunately, the streaming tools are rapidly growing more and more powerful. The quality today is significantly better than the quality six months ago. And it continues to improve at a phenomenal rate. But what about all these formats? One of the things that forces improvement in any technology is competition. That given, Web producers are often frustrated that there is no one fixed streaming standard. To that I ask, so what? Let's think about our world for a minute. Look around you and the world is full of differences. There are different types of computers, different types of pets, different types of cars, different languages, different types of religions, different types of people. For all this talk about standards, the human race is pretty nonstandard group. In every crowd there is usually quite a few who see things differently. So while standards are an important goal, human nature (and money) will mean that something will always be unsettled. Streaming media is all about making choices. What format does the best job in your situation? What technology do you like working with? So where is this streaming stuff going? In my opinion, the traditional Web world is stagnant. Sure, there have been improvements made behind the scenes in server/database integration. But for the traditional media producer or designer, the Web is quickly becoming a pretty boring place. Streaming media is the next big step. A multimedia Web experience is far more powerful at selling, informing, and educating than the Web as we know it today. New languages, technologies, and approaches in streaming media are about to replace the world of stagnant Web design with multimedia dreams. So what are these new languages, technologies, and approaches? Are you hooked yet? Good! Go to Business Tips Index to read other articles! |