A Primer on Video Streaming & More . . .

Imagine...

• Going to any school in Montana, any time, day or night - on a moment's notice.

• Delivering a live keynote address in Billings without walking out of your office in Helena.

• A series of lesson (video or audio) plans that play much like a television or radio station.

Streaming Media offers just that!

Streaming is the process of sending media over a network for viewing in real time. Streams can originate from a live source, such as a video camera, a webcast, or an audio feed from a radio station, or the source can be a QuickTime movie stored on the server. In either case, you aren’t downloading a file when you stream a movie. The data is simply being displayed as it arrives by the QuickTime plug-in and in QuickTime Player; no copy remains on the viewer’s hard disk.

With true live events, the stream functions more or less as the web version of a TV or radio broadcast; users can turn it on or off and switch to another channel. When you are streaming a completed movie stored on a hard disk (sort of a video-on-demand arrangement), your audience has random access to the entire stream and can jump anywhere within it.

Streaming Media was used for the first live video stream over the Internet, from the Montana State Capitol building. The broadcast of the State of Education to the Montana Legislature by Superintendent Linda McCulloch occurred 1:00 PM, February 14, 2003. Montana Govenor Judy Martz later used Streaming Media in her State of the State address.

The Montana legislature later employed Streaming Media to broadcast the Sentate and House chambers during the later days of the 2003 Legislative Session. There are plans to stream a Special Session of the Montana Legislature in January.

The Secretary of State and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bob Brown and Linda McCulloch, used Streaming Media in their "Get out the Vote" campaign. That project video streamed all of the candidates for U.S. Senate with their answers to student questions.

The Montana Office of Public Instruction has gone through intensive exercises over the last five years to determine which technologies we should use for delivering video, and why, for an IP-based television delivery system. We examined technologies such as Windows Media, Real, VideoFurnace, and QuickTime.

Ultimately, we decided on some important requirements:

• The service must deliver content using open, international standards (e.g., MPEG family)
• The client must support the majority platforms (e.g., Windows and Mac OS X, Linux)
• The client must be free (and free of any royalty/licensing encumbrances for users)
• The content must also be able to be played on alternative platforms (e.g., Linux) and equipment (e.g., set-top boxes, Cell phones, Satellite and Cable)

For these reasons, we chose the QuickTime MPEG-4, H.264 technologies. While QuickTime itself is proprietary, it delivers the content using open standards and protocols (MPEG4 H.264). It also gives us flexibility to interchage parts of the solution (servers, delivery, clients) in the future.

Advantages of streaming. There are many advantages to direct streaming, as opposed to simply posting a movie to our web site and having people download it. Download the Streaming Media Primer from Adobe for more detailed information on streaming technology. Instant play With streaming, people can see your media play right away--there are no lengthy downloads. Live events Streaming is the only way to distribute live events such as news events and conferences over the web. Long-form media Streaming media are not limited to file sizes that make a reasonable download. Long-form media such as feature films and concerts that would make multi-gigabyte downloads can stream effortlessly. Multicasting Many viewers can tune into one stream--a process called multicasting. Random access Viewers can pause, fast forward, or otherwise interact with prerecorded movies and play only the parts they want. Distribution control Streaming allows you to maintain control over the distribution and copyright of your media. Anyone can download a movie, alter it, and redistribute it themselves, but it’s much harder to redistribute the contents of a stream. When your audience saves your streaming movie, all it is saving is the URL of the stream and some user settings. The actual data is never copied.

OPI's Internet Services Bureau has configured two streaming media servers with enough capacity to stream thousands of hours of video and audio content to Montana's K-12 schools. In addition to OPI, our streaming media servers are used by the Montana's Officie of the Governor, Department of Administration Information Techology Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Secretary of State, Board of Public Education, Department of Environmental Quality, Legislative Services and many more.

With all of the various methods to deliver streaming content, why QuickTime and MPEG-4? The following will help explain why this technology is the best choice.

About MPEG-4

Why MPEG-4? Many people view MPEG-4 simply as MPEG-2 with double the compression. This is partly true, but MPEG-4 brings much more than improved compression. MPEG-4 is a complete "architecture" or system that enables broadcasters to deploy a complete, scaleable solution.

MPEG-4 provides not only the description for coding audio and video (as its predecessors MPEG-1 and MPEG-2), but also for coding images, animations, interactivity, protecting content, and distributing content on various transport channels - such as an MPEG-2 transport stream for digital broadcast, or as an IP (Internet Protocol) network for broadband streaming.

Benefits of MPEG-4 include:

Open, international standard: MPEG-4 is interoperable between products, ensuring multi-vendor support. Over 300 companies have spent over $500 million creating products based on the MPEG-4 standard.

Immediate cost savings on bandwidth and storage: MPEG-4 files result in a 50 percent improvement over MPEG-2 files.

Monetization of digital media assets, engagement of end user: With MPEG-4, you can create interactive media using multiple objects - audio, video, PowerPoint, 2D, and animation - in a single format. In addition, you can protect and monetize your content through digital rights management interfaces.

Broadest support for networks and devices: MPEG-4 provides optimal audio/video quality for low- and high-bandwidth networks. MPEG-4 files can be played back on multiple devices such as TV set-tops, PCs, and wireless devices.

Be sure to visit the demonstration pages, click on the links that have the icon next to them.

Why QuickTime?

Support for industry standards

The premier technology for creating, playing and delivering digital media over the Internet, QuickTime fully supports the latest global multimedia standards, including MPEG-4, H.264 and 3GPP. Likewise, Streaming Media Server provides native support for streaming MPEG-4, H.264 and 3GPP files — so our content runs on any standard-compliant media player on Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. It also lets us serve standard MP3 files using Icecast-compatible protocols over HTTP to any MP3 client. With Streaming Media Server, we can be sure that we reach the widest audience possible.

Streaming made easy

Mac OS X Server v10.5 now makes managing our media content and preparing it for streaming a snap with Streaming Media Server Publisher. QuickTime movies(.mov) and MPEG-4 (.mp4) files intended for streaming need to be hinted — that is, given hint tracks that contain information about transmission packet size and protocol so that Streaming Media Server delivers our movies smoothly and reliably. QuickTime Streaming Server Publisher hints our media files automatically.

With an intuitive interface similar to that of iTunes, QTSS Publisher also lets us create playlists of QuickTime movies, MPEG-4, and MP3 files that can be set to play back in order or at random. We can even add items to our playlist on the fly without interrupting the stream. Posting our content to our website is a breeze, too, because QTSS Publisher has one-click web page creation with templates.

Easy Plug-in Installation

In order to view streaming video, you need to install a Web browser plug-in. QuickTime is very easy to install.

When launched in 1999, Streaming Media Server rocked the streaming media industry to its foundations with its open sourced, standards-based Real-Time Transport Protocol/Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTP/RTSP) engine. Now Streaming Media Server 4 extends its support for standards by adding both MPEG-4 and MP3 with Skip Protection to its palette of capabilities.

No “Server Tax”

With Streaming Media Server, we can serve up to 4000 simultaneous streams from a single server, or scale up to meet increased traffic by adding multiple servers. And there’s no penalty for success: Unlike other streaming servers, QuickTime Streaming Server has no per-stream charge. This freedom from “server tax” represents enormous savings over other media platforms, especially for customers with high-volume media distribution requirements.

ADA Compliance

With QuickTime we can create a text track for a movie by importing any text file. Each paragraph, delineated by a Return character, is a separate frame of a movie. By default, each text frame is displayed for two seconds. These text tracks are searchable, so our users can search for key words to find precise frames in a movie.

Rave Reviews

See why Network Computing has named QuictTime Streaming Server "Editor's Choice" after evaluating the top three contenders, QuickTime, RealNetworks, and Windows Media.

In an informal Network Computing survey, 5,000 readers were asked to respond to a number of questions about desktop video. Results of the survey.

QuickTime wins a GRAMMY

Apple was honored by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with a Technical GRAMMY Award for its outstanding technical contributions to the music industry and recording field. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a PC company.

Apple wins an Emmy

Final Cut Pro, Apple's professional video and film editing software, received a 2002 EmmyEngineering Award for its impact on the television industry from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. OPI's Internet Services Bureau uses Final Cut Pro for it's video editing.

Reference Movies
Automatic Bandwidth Detection

We face a tough choice when we want to deliver our QuickTime movies over the web. Part of our audience --the larger part-- has a dialup connection and a slow computer and can’t view large movies with high frame rates. They need small movies, highly compressed. The other part of our audience --the smaller part-- has a fast connection and a fast computer and hates postage-stamp-sized media. They want movies with the highest possible video and audio quality. How do we satisfy both?

With QuickTime, we don’t have to choose --we just use a reference movie. A reference movie contains pointers to alternate data rate movies --that is, multiple versions of the movie designed for downloading at various data rates.

For example, we automatically create three versions of a movie --a version optimized for 56K modem dialup access, a version for DSL or cable modem access, and a version for T1 access--put them all on our web page, and have the reference movie choose which is appropriate for each viewer.

QuickTime 3 and later can auto-select the right movie for any connection speed (or CPU speed, or language, or QuickTime version) in the QuickTime Settings dialog without the viewer having to make a choice, and without special coding on our part. We can even create a default movie that plays if none of the criteria are met.

QuickTime is much more than Video . . .

QuickTime is Virtual Reality . . . At 360°, QuickTime VR puts a new spin on virtual reality. QuickTime VR now features Cubic VR to give you 360° worlds. Click on the icon on the left for an example! QuickTime is Interactive . . . Click on the QuickTime sprite to make this movie 'blink'. With sprites, expect the surreal: Water that ripples when you click on it with your cursor. Fog that parts as you approach. A spot in a movie that takes you through the looking glass into another movie. These are the work of QuickTime sprites–the tiny animated graphic elements that bring web pages to life. Click on the landscape on the left to see sprites in action. VideoClix's next generation authoring software empowers us to build interactivity right into our movies. Create Video Hotspots, allocate Actions, Place Chapters and Text Tracks with a simple click of a button.

There are two different methods of distributing our video training movies, one called FASTSTART the other RTSP Streaming. The following table explains the pro's and con's of each delivery method.

Fast Start Vs Streaming
View a FastStart Standard Definition Demonstration View a FastStart High Definition Demonstration Compare the file size difference between the original HD movie and the MPEG-4, H.264 movie. Compresses to more than half the original!	View a Streaming Video Demonstration
Fast Start pros	Fast Start cons
No special server software needed Movie gets through no matter how slow the connection With fast connection, movie plays as it downloads--it looks like streaming to the audience Delivers all types of QuickTime media, including sprites and QuickTime VR Lost packets are retransmitted until they are received No problems with firewalls or Network Address Translation (NAT)	Can’t broadcast or multicast Can’t transmit live feeds Can’t skip ahead; audience must download the entire movie Puts a copy of the movie on the local hard disk--you lose control
Streaming pros	Streaming cons
Only way to transmit live feeds Broadcasts and multicasts (one stream to many viewers) Random access within prerecorded movies Uses no space on viewer’s hard disk Never uses more bandwidth than it needs. Doesn't leave a copy of the movie on the viewer’s hard disk. Can stream individual tracks into a movie from any streaming server anywhere.	Movie breaks up if data rate exceeds connection speed Lost packets are gone for good; movie always loses some data (though some data is almost always lost over the Internet – over a LAN, there is normally no data loss). Some QuickTime media types, such as QuickTime VR, Flash and sprites, don’t stream. Can be stopped by firewalls or NAT.

MPEG-4 Support

We can serve ISO-compliant hinted MPEG-4 files to any ISO-compliant MPEG-4 client, including any MPEG-4 enabled device that supports playback of MPEG-4 streams over IP. You can serve on-demand or live MPEG-4 streams, and reflect playlists of MPEG-4 files. Learn more about MPEG-4.

H.264 Support

A state-of-the-art video codec called H.264, which delivers stunning quality at remarkably low data rates. Ratified as part of the MPEG-4 standard (MPEG-4 Part 10), this ultra-efficient technology gives you excellent results across a broad range of bandwidths, from 3G for mobile devices to iChat AV for video conferencing to HD for broadcast and DVD. Learn more about H.264

Tomorrow’s Media Today

MPEG-4 is designed to deliver DVD (MPEG-2) quality video at lower data rates and smaller file sizes. And the same folks who created the popular .mp3 file format — a.k.a. MPEG-1 layer III — developed the new Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec, providing much more efficient compression than MP3 with a quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio.

MPEG-4 is ready to stream incredible-quality audio and video today in QuickTime 6. With the free QuickTime Player or browser plug-in, users can play back any compliant MPEG-4 file. With QuickTime Broadcaster, we can produce live events (Linda McCulloch's keynote to the legislature, House and Senate debates during the 2003 session) in MPEG-4, making the QuickTime workflow (Broadcaster to Server to Player) the industry’s first end-to-end, standards-based architecture.

But that’s not all. Because hundreds of multimedia authoring applications are built upon the QuickTime architecture, QuickTime 6 instantly adds MPEG-4 capabilities to all these tools. This allows us to immediately create MPEG-4 content in programs such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Discreet Cleaner, and many more.

AAC Audio

AAC Audio is the new standard in professional audio. It provides more efficient compression than older formats such as MP3, yet delivers quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio. The newly enhanced QuickTime AAC codec builds upon new, state-of-the-art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories, and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) encoding to QuickTime. Learn more about MPEG-4 AAC audio.

Plays Well With Others

Like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 previously did for CD-ROMs and DVDs, MPEG-4 promises to create interoperability for video delivered over the Internet and other distribution channels. MPEG-4 will play back on many different devices, from satellite television to wireless devices.

To ensure that different products that use MPEG-4 each implement the standard in the same way, Apple, together with Cisco, IBM, Kasenna, Philips and Sun Microsystems, formed the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA). Other participants include AOL, Time Warner, Dolby Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, National Semiconductor, Sony, and 25 other companies. The ISMA defines profiles that companies implement to ensure interoperability.

That means we can rest assured that the MPEG-4 media stream we create using one company’s product will run on another vendor’s player.

3GPP Support

QuickTime 6.3 delivers extensive support for 3GPP, including video, audio, text, and native .3gp file format support. Because 3GPP is now a part of the core architecture of QuickTime, you can import, export, and play back .3gp files just as you do .mp4 and .mov files.

The technologies in QuickTime 6.3 that provide these capabilities are newly enhanced MPEG-4 and H.263 video codecs, a newly enhanced AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio codec, a new AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) audio codec, a new 3G Text importer and exporter, and a new user-friendly 3GPP export dialog to aid in the creation of 3GPP-compliant files. This support is available via the QuickTime 3GPP Component. Learn more about 3GPP.

MPEG-2 Playback

QuickTime 6 delivers playback of MPEG-2 content via the QuickTime 6 MPEG-2 Playback Component, sold separately in the Apple Store online. Support for MPEG-2 is the perfect addition for professional content creators who wish to preview and share work throughout their production processes.

MP3 Streaming

We can serve standard MP3 files using Icecast-compatible protocols over http. Build a playlist of MP3 files and serve them to MP3 clients such as iTunes, SoundJam and WinAmp for a simulated live experience.

Skip Protection

Skip Protection uses excess bandwidth to buffer ahead data faster than real time on the client machine. When packets are lost, communication between client and server results in retransmission of only the lost packets, reducing impact to network traffic. By buffering ahead a high-quality “copy” of the media, Streaming Media Server delivers a high-quality media stream time after time.

Playlists

Create playlists to deliver our own personal radio or TV station. The easy-to-use interface lets us drag the desired files into a playlist, start it — and forget it.

Friendly Administration Interface

We can easily create and serve playlists, customize general settings, monitor connected users, view log files, manage user and bandwidth usage, and relay a stream from one server to another for scalability — all from within the interface. And because the interface is web-based, we can administer our server from anywhere by connecting remotely from just about any machine with Internet access.

MP3 Playlist Web Interface

The easy-to-use interface lets us drag the desired files into a playlist, start it — and forget it. It runs automatically without intervention. We can set a playlist to play once, loop continuously, or play the contents in a specific order or randomly. We can even set the importance of certain files — say station IDs, promotional announcements or program advertising — so they repeat more often than others.

User Administration Web Interface

The built-in Setup Assistant guides us through the setup process in 5 easy steps. Set passwords, enable secure administration — via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) if you have a valid certificate — specify the location of the media folder, and enable streaming via http port 80 if you need to stream through firewalls. You can easily create and serve playlists, customize general settings, monitor connected users, view log files, manage user and bandwidth usage, and relay a stream from one server to another for scalability — all from within the interface. And because the interface is web-based, we can administer our server from anywhere by connecting remotely from just about any machine with Internet access.