Streaming Audio and Media Service

What is Streaming Audio and Media

Internet streaming audio / media changed the web as we knew it, changed it from a static text and graphics based medium into a multimedia experience populated by sound and moving pictures. Now streaming audio / media is poised to become the de facto global media broadcasting and distribution standard, incorporating all other media, including television, radio, and film. The low cost, convenience, worldwide reach, and technical simplicity of using one global communications standard makes web broadcasting irresistible to media publishers, broadcasters, corporations, and individuals. Businesses and individuals once denied access to such powerful means of communication are now using the web to connect with people all over the world.

This remarkable technology that allows a web site visitor to click on a button and seconds later listen to a sporting event, tradeshow keynote, or DVD quality music or video is the result of a rather simple but powerful technical innovation called streaming audio / media. Streaming works by first compressing a digital file and then breaking it into small packets, which are sent, one after another, over the Internet. When the packets reach their destination (the requesting user), they are decompressed and reassembled into a form that can be played by the user's system. To maintain the illusion of seamless play, the packets are "buffered" so a number of them are downloaded to the user's machine before playback. As those buffered or preloaded packets play, more packets are being downloaded and queued up for playback.

There are currently more than a dozen formats for streaming audio over the web, from widely used formats, such as RealNetworks' RealAudio, streaming MP3, Adobe's Flash and Adobe's Shockwave, Microsoft's Windows Media, and Apple's QuickTime, to more recent entries that synchronise sounds with events on a web page, such as RealMedia G2 with SMIL and Beatnik's Rich Music Format (RMF).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Streaming Audio and Media

Listening to momentary blips in music or a conversation is annoying, and the only way to compensate for that over an erratic network such as the Internet is to get some of the audio data into the computer before you start listening to it. In streaming audio / media, both the client and server co-operate for uninterrupted sound and / or vision. The client side stores a few seconds of sound in a buffer before it starts sending it to the speakers. Throughout the session it continues to receive audio data ahead of time.

Advances in computer networking combined with powerful home computers and modern operating systems make streaming audio / media practical and affordable for ordinary consumers. Stand-alone Internet radio devices are offering listeners a “no-computer” option for listening to audio streams.

A media stream can be on demand or live. On demand streams are stored on a server for a long period of time, and are available to be transmitted at a user's request. Live streams are only available at one particular time (please see our Webcasting Service).

Some streaming broadcasters use streaming systems that interfere with the ability to record streams for later playback, either inadvertently, through poor choice of streaming protocol, or deliberately, because they believe it is to their advantage to do so. Broadcasters may be concerned that copies will result in lost sales or that consumers may skip commercials.

Whether users have the ability and the right to record streams has become a significant issue in the application of law to cyberspace. Efforts to make it illegal to record a stream may rely on copyrights, patents or license agreements.

What we do for you

This form of advertising is very popular at present, with many video and audio sharing sites popping up on the Internet every week, sites like Yahoo! and YouTube are household names. We will set up a streaming audio / media file on your web site and submit it to these and many more audio / media sharing sites.

Please note: This service does not include the filming and recording of your streaming audio / media. If you require this service, please contact our designers who can help you in sourcing audio / media recording companies.

The Products

RealMedia and RealAudio
RealMedia is the most widely adopted streaming media format on the web. It's popularity is due in large part to the fact that it was the first streaming technology on the market. But it's popular also because of RealNetworks' laser focus on ease of use, deployment of a wide palette of developer tools, continuous support for the latest multimedia technologies, and support for both Windows and Unix platforms. RealMedia is the format of choice for professionals who want advanced controls for serving, tracking, and managing large numbers of audio streams. RealNetworks has been a trailblazer in making advanced server features, which were once accessible only to those with advanced programming skills, available to the public.

Windows Media Technologies
Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies includes a comprehensive suite of authoring tools and streaming services for delivering audio, video, animation, and other multimedia over the Internet. Windows Media comes with a complete set of tools for encoding and authoring streaming content including Windows Media T.A.G. Author, a utility for arranging media elements along a timeline. Windows Media presentations are played back with the Windows Media Player, which plays most local and streamed media file types including Advanced Streaming Format (Windows' native file format), MPEG, WAV, AVI, QuickTime, and RealAudio / RealVideo. Since Media Player is distributed with Windows, it has widespread distribution.

Windows Media allows for better playback over machines running Windows. To enable smooth multimedia playback over the web and avoid the problematic issue of cumbersome plug-in downloads altogether, Microsoft is moving towards integrating Windows Media Player, along with Internet Explorer, directly into the Windows operating system.

Windows Media wraps all media elements into one Active Streaming File (ASF), Microsoft's proprietary streaming media format. According to Microsoft, with ASF any object can be placed into an ASF data stream, including audio and video, scripts, ActiveX controls, and HTML.

Apple QuickTime
Apple Computer's QuickTime enables the delivery and playback of video, audio, animation, 3-D, and panoramic images for Macintosh and Windows. QuickTime is also the leading video production platform for both Windows and Macintosh. Most multimedia on computers begins with or involves QuickTime. Accordingly, the QuickTime technology is a natural for high-quality audio and video playback over the web. Similar to Windows Media, QuickTime does not charge licensing fees for the number of simultaneous streams served. QuickTime can be streamed from the Mac OS X Server, the Darwin Streaming Media Server, and RealNetworks' RealServer 8.0.

One of the keys to the success of the QuickTime technology and plug-in is that it can handle all types of media elements. For those who are trying to design for the greatest number of users and the least number of plug-ins, this can be a significant benefit.

In addition to playing MP3 content, QuickTime supports Timecode tracks as well as MIDI standards, including the Roland Sound Canvas and GS format extensions. QuickTime also supports key standards for web streaming, including HTTP, RTP, and RTSP, plus, QuickTime supports every major file format for images, including JPEG, BMP, PICT, PNG, and GIF. QuickTime also features built-in support for digital video, including MiniDV, DVCPro, and DVCam camcorder formats, as well as support for AVI, AVR, MPEG-1, and OpenDML.

Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is the solution for full-scale, high-impact web multimedia with short sound effects and loops. Flash's bandwidth friendly vector animation is ideally suited for web content delivery. Flash encodes embedded soundtracks in MP3 format that allows for better streaming and higher quality audio playback.

Flash is also tightly integrated with RealMedia. You can combine a Flash animation with a RealAudio soundtrack using the RealDeveloper tools to encode a RealFlash presentation. RealFlash allows linear playback from within the RealMedia architecture taking advantage of RealMedia's advanced bandwidth negotiation for streaming audio and video and Flash's streamlined vector graphics for interactive animation.

STREAMING AUDIO & MEDIA COSTS £120.