Definatly a hot topic that could raise a lot of discussion in our group.
The short answer would be "It depends on your audiance and Budget". Many others have provided good answers and suggestions based upon their experiance.
The long answer ends up being an essay about the technology of streaming itself, especally in the context of providing services. There is a CF Talker from Vivid Media who can provide some metrics to some of the concepts outlined below in a real world setting and help provide some real numbers to my questions you'll need to answer before starting this exciting service.
1) Streaming or Downloading.
Video files are huge. anything over a minute having *some* sort of quality becomes a long download that people are not patient about. (By the way of background, the CFtalker from Vivid Media should have some real emperical data on this subject. Not only that, you probally already have thought about if 5 people were uploading and downloading files from your server farm
So in reality the streaming solution becomes the better choice since there are less bytes on the network pipe and happier customers for longer videos. On the other hand, streaming brings up another huge issue-- encoding rates.
In your business model how long will your videos be? Who will be your audiance? Will your audiance mind a 20 minute download to view a video?
How are videos uploaded?
Check to see how long CFFILE will work until it times out while uploading a file. 300K files can be many, many MBs, eating up valuable bandwidth and server space.
How will you Stream?
What streaming platform are you leaning toward? Each has its pros and cons.
Some will say to go with Windows Media Server... everyone has it and the tools are cheep and available. Its also easy to go from camcorder to windows media file using Microsoft Movie Maker for the novice. This platform is the easiest to set up from the server side and will allow you to easily stream over port 80. ASX files are also nice, clean an compact-- with its XML format easy to program (and write)as well. Microsoft even has a command link script inserter that is easy to use.
Some will say go with Real... since it plays everything and uses an Open Source server... however many people find real one annoying because of the ads. This platform is also the easiest to program as well to create events such as a stop or a pause button. Real has also changed its protocal several times as well inside the RM file as well.
There's Flash Video and of couse Quick Time. Flash video is really compelling, especally if you have other services (a survey, authentication, ads, forms)on the faceplate.
Your choice really depends on your business model and your audiance. Any ads? Are you using the video as a part of a larger e-learning project?
Benchmarking will help in this way.
1) Take a look at Launch.com. Will you be using Ads and forms like their site
2) Take a look at other video intensive sites such as Macromedia.com or Microsoft.com
Are you going to stream video without ads or without any way to add on value added services such as determining the number of people using the product?
How will you host?
I'm sure you have a great deal for bandwidth at your hosting facility. However, once you work with video, as I pointed out yesterday in a post about video streaming, the encoding rate becomes important.
Videos designed for dial-up connections really look bad no matter the platform... however on a single T-1 line one can handle 20-25 simutanous streams at this rate before moving into the burstable zone. Change the encoding rate to 300K (a great looking video!) and only 5-6 people can view the video before moving into the burstable zone. If you're allowing people to post their own videos, then they will try to upload a 300K video as much as possible... this will take you into the burstable zone turning a reasonable payment on a T-1 line into an expensive proposition.
Final Thoughts
I've been down this road before... the biggest problem for this set up are not technological in nature... rather they are about the customer service, pricing and costing. From a customer service standpoint is tough to communicate why customers on a dial up connection can't see a 300K video or to tell authors to encode to the lowest common deonmonator.
>From a pricing perspective how does one charge for self service when wholesalers such as Playstream.com will change 10 cents per MB of storage and very compedative for streaming rates on their servers? What value added services will you offer to differencate yourself from the wholesalers?
Jeremy Brodie
Edgewater Technology
web: http://www.edgewater.com
phone:(703) 815-2500
nasdaq symbol: EDGE
>I'm looking at a CF app to upload a video file to a server and then allow
>people to view it. I know some video file types automatically stream and
>others don't. What is the best type for an app like this?
>Thanks
>
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