THE ARRIVAL OF PLAYERLESS VIDEO AND AUDIO STREAMING by Abhijit Bhattacharjee, CEO of  GRUS Media Works

We are familiar of the Internet as composed of text and images and a lot of animated graphics. The next logical step is the rich media enrichment of the World Wide Web. By rich media we mean the enabling of video and audio to make the websites come alive. To drive this forward is the tremendous growth of bandwidth that is already under way.

Streaming is a technology for playing audio and video files on digital networks, the Internet for example. A user can view the audio or video files directly from the web server for immediate playback. This avoids time consuming downloads of large files.

Video files are typically large files, which would take a long while to download. (Could be few tens of minutes or even hours). Very few users would want to wait that long before they can view a file. Most, would loose interest if they were to wait for the whole video file to download from the Internet before being able to view it. 

VIDEO STREAMING
Hence a means had to be developed called video streaming where the videos are ready to play as soon as the first bits of that video arrive. We do not have to wait for the whole video to download before we are ready to view it. Similar is the case with Audio content, which too can be quite bulky. Streaming is the most practical way in which video and audio can be delivered across digital networks on demand.

MEDIA PLAYERS
Streaming has been traditionally implemented using streaming servers. The mechanism works out in a manner that a software residing at the server communicates with another software (a player) at the user machine, to set up the synchronisation and the delivery between the two pieces of software.

We had three major technologies that offered streaming software, hardware and solutions. They were: 
· Real Media, 
· Windows Media Player and 
· Apple Quicktime. 

These technologies relied upon users having to download their respective players before they were ready to see the content being delivered through their respective technologies. In some of these cases, they were also tied to particular operating system. 

However, the biggest factor that went against their acceptability is the Download Warning Box that popped up every time you looked at some of their content. Users worldwide hardly ever say “Yes” to a Download Box that pops up. Due to these reasons, despite the tremendous potential of rich media on the Internet, the acceptability of videos has remained very low with less than 1 % of the websites of the world offering any kind of rich media content. 

To add to this, security flaws have time to time created fear in the users, like the Feb 2004 report about security holes in the Real Media Player that can turn the user machine into a zombie delivering unsolicited Emails and other malicious activities like accessing pornographic sites!

Real has slapped a 1 billion dollar lawsuit against Microsoft for its alleged monopolistic practice in including the Windows Media Player with its operating systems. The US government’s antitrust proceedings against Microsoft have been closely followed by the European Union. One remedy under consideration is a requirement that Microsoft remove the Windows Media Player (WMP) from the versions of Windows that are distributed within the European Union's jurisdiction.

All of these above media player solutions, require a player or any other third party executable to be downloaded / installed and hence are called player based solutions. These are fairly generic amongst themselves in their implementations.

PLAYERLESS STREAMING
We now have another technology called Playerless Video Audio Streaming, which advantages from Java to reach across all operating systems and without the user having to ever download and install anything. The quality is also clearly better, even though the file sizes are much smaller. These Java based videos support a whole lot of new functionalities inside the videos, like hyperlinks inside the video elements and execution of scripts to bring about unlimited interactivity in and around the videos. For example, it can change the text around the videos in sync with the progress of the video for a great self-paced presentation or it can pop up a purchase form in the middle of the video.

The videos automatically detect the bandwidth of the user and send a stream optimized for his/her connection speed. Thus making it possible for people on very slow connections, even 5 or 10 kbps connects (as is common in India) to get to experience streaming videos and audio. 

CLIPSTREAM
This technology called Clipstream™ from Canada has just arrived in India and is set to change the web to a more rich media experience. The technology also offers watertight piracy protection packages, preventing video and audio from being downloaded or stolen.

Spared from the costs and licenses of Streaming servers as required by Player based solutions, Clipstream™ is offering extremely cost effective solutions to hosting of videos and audios on the web, with entry costs at around Rs 20,000 while streaming servers often run into many thousands of dollars. Also, the biggest costs of hosting videos on the Internet are bandwidth costs and Clipstream™ cuts down bandwidth costs drastically because the technology advantages of http caching. HTTP caching is a clever mechanism to pick up frequently accessed web elements from the nearest caching servers instead from the main server.

Player based solutions also have a licensing policy depending on the number of simultaneous streams, Clipstream™ supports unlimited number of simultaneous streams, all of which benefit from each other due to http caching, getting increasingly enhanced performance. The technology offers many firsts, including Videos inside banners and even Videos inside Emails!

Detailed information is available on their website www.grus-india.com in the form of a FAQ. (Frequently Asked Questions) Also Clipstream.com

ONLINE PROMOTION AND ADVERTISING
The technology opens up great opportunities for corporate websites with Chairman’s speech, multimedia product catalogs with voiceovers, TV style ads on websites / banners for automobile companies, tourism and hotels, films and television, distance education and direct marketing and public awareness campaigns through Video Emails. In March, Reebok executed Europe’s largest video advertising campaign, the Shakira advertisement on leading portals like Yahoo!, MP3.com and MTV using Clipstream™ technology. The technology was also utilized by Columbia Tristar in showcasing a prelude to 2002 Spiderman release.

It also supports interesting features, which cater to the aesthetic demands of the web designer and Clipstream™ can be mixed with other technologies like Flash and Shockwave to play videos from websites and banners.

Showcase here
http://clipstream.com/showcase/
http://www.grus-india.com/show/Showcase.html


CLIPSTREAM LIVE
Clipstream™ also has the ability to stream LIVE video from a site like events, seminars, trade shows, sporting events, AGMs, Product Launches, marriages etc across the globe through the Internet. The technology can also be adapted for low cost video conferencing solutions on small bandwidths for corporate communications as also CCTV applications over IP for remote monitoring of industry / shop floor and security. These trials have also been done successfully in India. The encoders are flexible in frame size, frame rates, quality of compression and other parameters to offer solutions for any kind of bandwidth starting at 40 kbps for LIVE.

Clipstream™ LIVE can also stream a television feed right on to the Internet!
http://www.clipstream.com/products/live/

The technology was used for the first time in India for LIVE IP Webcasting during the COMPASS 2004 IT fair on Kolkata Maidan grounds by a local company called GRUS MEDIA WORKS, where a laptop on a public static IP was converted to a web server, was carried around the fair grounds on Wifi and anyone across the globe could see the fair by looking at that IP over http. The same video can even be embedded on a web page! 

To support an increasing number of concurrent users, Clipstream™ LIVE supports Relay Server solutions for load balancing across the globe and flexible scaling up of operations.




The author is CEO of Kolkata based GRUS Media Works, who represents Clipstream in India and is engaged in marketing, implementing and supporting this technology in this region. Mr Abhijit Bhattacharjee can be reached at:

GRUS MEDIA WORKS
5C Nilanjana; 43, D H Road
Kolkata 700 034
Email: contact@grus-india.com
Mobile: 98303 98631
(www.grus-india.com)

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