Business television and distance learning are on the brink of a new breakthrough with the merging of streamed video and the Web.
Up to now the basic model for business TV was simple. You started off with a source signal (a studio, a video player, a conference room fitted with cameras), you played out to the satellite, and you received the signal either point-to-point or point-to-multipoint on a standard TV monitor. Any interactivity was provided through a return telephone line.
Graphic Image Technologies (GIT) MD Mark Chertkow says that by using UDP-IP protocols (similar to the Internet protocol TCP/IP), it is possible to stream live video in a Web page.
"You can now embed a video feed directly in a Web page. Video can then be streamed live or prerecorded and transmitted with the combined audio, text and graphics page to the receiving computer or computers," says Chertkow. "This opens the door for corporate producers of business video to use technologies that are cost-effective and profitable."
Chertkow adds that by using newly released UDP products (such as Optibase`s industry-standard ComMotion UDP), producers can follow a simple process to providing innovative content for a variety of business TV and distance learning applications:
. Start off by building a Web page using any standard Web-authoring tool;
. Embed an ActiveX control that receives UDP protocols and an MPEG-2 video stream;
. UDP software delivers the combined signal to the satellite or LAN. Analogue telephone lines don`t provide enough bandwidth in this case;
. The signal is received by a client computer, multicast to a group of IP addresses or broadcast widely to any number of recipients.
. The signal can also be loaded onto third-party servers such as Oracle`s
Video Server and SGI`s WebFORCE MediaBase, then accessed when needed. The process provides interesting options for interactivity. "If the video stream consists of a live lecturer, for example, he can instruct the viewer to open up any other page of text and graphics for supplementary information to the lecture," says Chertkow. "The same interactivity can be used for product demonstrations and corporate image briefings."
Users select bandwidth requirements according to their budgets. 256kb buys realtime, full-motion quarter-resolution video that rivals VHS quality. At the upper end, 4-8MB delivers MPEG-2 Betacam quality. The cost difference in satellite time is considerable.
Downloaded streams can be stored locally for future access. A 4GB device will store eight hours of 256kb video.
Chertkow says ComMotion can output MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video to TV monitors and MPEG-1 video to VGA monitors from 56Kbps to 15Mbps.
"The application is broad enough to satisfy most corporate needs but will take time to settle as the necessary technology skills embed themselves in the market," Chertkow concludes.
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