Image quality in the video streaming market is getting better all the time. Fiona Keating looks at what we can expect from web- based video in the months ahead.
The cable industry is taking on the telcos in the delivery of high speed internet access, multimedia content, videoconferencing and internet telephony as vendors rally around a new infrastructure standard. In recent months, there’s been a good deal of jockeying for position amongst video streaming companies. One of the emerging trends is the relentless march of Microsoft Corp, which is either purchasing companies outright or buying shares in video streaming businesses. VDOnet Corp recently announced that Microsoft and telco giant, US West, have taken equity stakes in the company. The US West involvement follows an investment in VDOnet by another telco, Nynex, and highlights the interest these companies are taking in video delivery over their networks. Microsoft is now on VDO’s board and licenses its NetMeeting conferencing technology and NetShow networking platform for multimedia applications into VDOnet’s products. The deal also means that Microsoft will license VDOnet’s VDOWave, which will be integrated into future versions of the Windows operating system. This is an important endorsement of the work and vision VDO has taken to introduce motion video in the internet to a stage people saw as not doable a year ago, said VDOnet CEO Asaf Mohr. It sends a strong signal that video on the internet has becoming a validated proposition. According to Mohr: I think the endorsement of Microsoft and Intel to any standards are paramount to success of those standards, because Microsoft and Intel are in the best position to influence standards. Microsoft executives concur that everyday internet video is closer than many now believe. We did this deal because we like their technology, we share a similar corporate culture, and we both have a vision on uniting the streaming and conferencing video applications, said Blake Irving, group manager for the internet platforms and tools division at Microsoft. Irving is keen to stress that Microsoft’s relationship and investment in VDOnet does not mean that it will abandon working with other companies in this area. Irving reveals that the company will continue to forge and build relationships with other internet video companies. The streaming piece of the video solution is likely be solved by the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), recently submitted as a proposed standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), by a coalition of more than 40 of the industry’s biggest players, spearheaded by Netscape and RealNetworks. However, RTSP does not directly deal with conferencing, which is believed by many to be essential for developing a complete video standard for the internet. In the future you’ll see a combination of conferencing and streaming, says Irving. People may do a five-person collaborative press conference with 2,000 press people listening in. RTSP is a promising proposal that has tons of technical merit. There are things we really like there, but there are also things that need to be changed, he adds. Microsoft and VDOnet have promised to work with the IETF’s H323 standard for videoconferencing, and it is hoped that eventually the conferencing and streaming standards will co-exist. Microsoft’s investment and partnership with VDOnet represents the latest in a series of acquisitions and technology partnerships by the software giant, and is further evidence that Microsoft is attempting to bolster its image as a standards-based team player in the internet. The internet in general is a place where partnering is commonplace, Irving pointed out. No one company can do it alone. Microsoft has also unveiled NetShow 2.1, its multimedia streaming software, which supports RealAudio and RealVideo content. The release follows a deal signed with RealNetworks to work with each other’s streaming technology. Microsoft licensed the RealNetworks formats, while RealNetworks pledged to support Microsoft’s Active Streaming Format (ASF) file format in its future product releases. Microsoft has a non-voting minority stake in RealNetworks and purchased outright another video streaming company, VXtreme.
ASF as standard?
NetShow uses ASF to regulate the downloading of audio and video files from a server to a client machine. It’s believed that Microsoft now hopes to consolidate the streaming market around ASF. The NetShow 2.1 upgrade will let web sites use audio and video already created in the Real format and stream it with NetShow servers. NetShow players on users’ desktops will also support such content. Another addition to NetShow 2.1 is the Theater Server which will stream full-screen, ‘broadcast quality’ video over broadband networks, claims NetShow product manager Mike Ahern. Theater Server will work over ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) and faster Ethernet connections. NetShow client and server products are currently free but Microsoft may have plans to add some advanced streaming features next year to its SiteServer web server to allow web sites to charge for access to their multimedia content. Advances in RealSystem 5.0 from RealNetworks, include improved audio and video codecs and is scheduled to ship by the end of the year. Content providers will be able to encode Macromedia Flash, animations into RealVideo files, adding to the AVI, QuickTime, AU and WAV formats now supported by the products. RealSystem 5.0 will be further optimized for higher-speed connections, with the ability to play full-screen video at VHS quality over 300 Kbps connections. Over 28.8 Kbps connections, improvements in the codec algorithms will make streaming audio ‘near-CD quality’ and streaming video sharper and less jerky, according to RealNetworks. We want to make it even easier for companies to publish streaming audio and video content, maintains Philip Rosedale, general manager of the applications group. Another product RealPublisher, has a wizard-like interface to encode streaming media files from multiple audio and video types, as well as to automatically publish the files and web pages to a server. An effective example of putting these technologies to good use is a free service called Daily Briefing, provided by RealNetworks that uses RealPlayer to deliver streaming news and entertainment straight to the desktop. It offers a strong blend of news, sports, weather, commentary and comedy. It provides the latest headlines from ABC or Fox News, as well as technology news from Computerworld and CNET. News from each service is updated at least once every day, sometimes it is updated several times in a 24-hour period.
Bid for cohesion
In a further bid to create cohesion in the video streaming market, digital video processing software company, Ephyx Technologies has released V-Active for NetShow. With the tool, developers can transform linear video into interactive streaming hypervideo (digital video with embedded time-based events and interactive hotspots) for delivery over Microsoft’s NetShow. V- Active for NetShow opens up numerous creative possibilities for streaming video production, said Michael Ahern, NetShow lead product manager, Microsoft. The tool enriches streamed video with updated information and multimedia content. NetShow users will now be able to easily access dynamic and interactive content over NetShow ASF videos on their desktops. V-Active is also available for RealVideo. Developers can create clickable, object- based hotspots that launch URLs, other frames in the video, or other RealMedia files. The production can then be exported in RealMedia format for streaming over the RealVideo platform. Users with the RealPlayer do not require a separate plug-in to view the interactive content. V-Active for RealVideo is an excellent tool that at the click of a mouse immediately enriches streamed video content with updated URLs and information files, said Phil Barrett, senior vice president, media systems, RealNetworks. Users of our popular streaming video solutions will not be able to enjoy on-demand or liv
e video over the internet, but also full interactivity, creating a truly dynamic and engaging experience. Perhaps most important of all, the image quality is getting better, although still far short of TV’s 30 frames per second (fps). Nevertheless, while today’s video- streaming technologies can deliver 10 to 15 fps over T1 and faster connections, they often yield only 2 or 3 fps of a small grainy picture to analog modem users. It is widely acknowledged that quality and performance of video on the internet can vary dramatically. At times of low traffic, an optimum of 15 frames per second is achievable, but at busy times, the fps can be as low as one frame per second. According to the video streaming pioneers, RealNetworks, more than 15 million video players are already in the hands of browser users, with more than 45,000 hours of streaming video moving over the web each week. With video players generally free via downloading, the use of streaming video is set to expand dramatically in the future.
This article first appeared in Multimedia Futures. รก
