Hey, BitTorrent would be the way forward considering all the arguments the ISPs would kick up if you tried to unicast it from BBC servers - like when iPlayer traffic started up I guess. It being legit content, might open up more to the idea of BitTorrent distribution?
ZIPping large video content is a large negative - just wastes time. Processing power to even lightly try and compress already compressed files as you know is silly, and takes a long time and a lot of PC churning. If it's uncompressed however, compress away. But then we're talking niche... anyway - yeh as mentioned in a previous reply, TARring together some bits and pieces is efficient, compressing isn't. I guess if it was to be rolled out conventionally, partnering with someone that has a huge edge network - Google, Akamai, etc... would do the trick nicely. Or BitTorrent with content edge pushed to the ISPs. Packaging should be done in a viable format - as in useable... or popular, that's the right word? Some would say use the most free, some would say use the most popular - is there one that fits into both categories? Of course we can do subtitles on WMV, but that's locking in somewhat - but packaging the subtitle file then causes audience to narrow to those that know how to use it. What's the audience? If it's technical or editing people, then use some open, good quality format that can convert to many others. Then package the subtitles in a nice non-cryptic standard - you could have an XML base for the metadata. Is there any meta format that the big editing suites share? Preferably an XML style one - so the small guys can compete too and still use the information. Just throwing some ideas around... :) --Matt On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Christopher Woods < [email protected]> wrote: > Were we reading from the same crib sheet Andy? ;) > > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ >
