Adding streaming media to your site

To add streaming media to your web site, the audio or video needs to be produced, encoded, and transferred to a streaming media server.

Production
The production requirements for preparing a media clip or program for streaming vary depending on your needs and your application's requirements. Many companies and organizations begin adding streaming media to their sites by just converting existing videos and commercials. Others edit and modify existing programs or produce new multimedia content that is strictly for the web. Once the clip is produced, it will either be on tape or in a digital form on a CD-ROM or other storage media. The tape or digital file will be the source for encoding.

Encoding
Encoding is the process of converting a video from tape or CD-ROM into a format that can be streamed. The encoding can be set-up to accommodate different types of Internet connections from 28kbps modems to high-speed broadband or network connections. Once encoded, the streaming media file is transferred to a streaming media server for hosting.

Hosting
For video on the Internet to "stream", it needs to be hosted on a specially equipped streaming media server. The streaming media server interacts with the audience's streaming media player enabling the audio or video to start playing before the file has been downloaded. Files that are encoded for higher-quality broadband distribution demand more from the server than lower bandwidth files. Streaming media clips can play on your web site, even if they are hosted on a remote or third party server.