1.
Capturing Your Media To A Digital Format There are four basic steps you must
take in order to stream your media. The first of these steps is to capture your
media. In order to do this, you will need an input device for your computer. For
audio content, the input device can be a text sound card. For video content, you
will need some type of video capture device.
2.
Converting Your Media With An Encoding Station An encoding station is simply a
computer that runs encoding software (the "encoder") that converts your captured
media to a streaming (streaming video or streaming audio) format. Most encoders
require a reasonably fast computer to run. Normally a Pentium II with at least
128 MB of RAM is good if you're a PC user but, as always with computers, faster
is better. Typically, We recommend that you use the encoding software that is
provided by the manufacturer of the streaming format you have chosen.
3.
Uploading Your Media To Our Delivery Network After your content is converted to
a streaming format you must upload it to our servers. We offer two ways to do
this, either through the content management area when you are logged in to your
account or via FTP. Links to your content are generated via our globally load
balanced easy link system and you put these links into the HTML of your Web
page. when a someone visits your Web site and clicks a link for streaming audio
or streaming video, that request is directed to the data center closest to them
and they stream your content from our servers.
4.
Delivering Media When a streaming media Player makes a connection to one of our
streaming servers (RAM for RealMedia, ASX; WVX or WAX for Windows Media; or QTL
for QuickTime), the server sends the player data via User Datagram Protocol
(UDP) by default. If the streaming media player cannot accept this data, the
server trys resend it via the TCP protocol to several different ports, with port
80. final attempt if each attempt fails. This process is called protocol
rollover. If this negotiation is successful, and the server is either Windows
Media or the RealServer, a check is made for the connection speed configured in
the connection settings of the streaming media player. Based on the connection
speed returned to the server from the player, the server will send the highest
play supported stream from a multiple-bit-rate streaming file, the whole file in
the case of a single-bit-rate streaming file, or just the audio portion of an
audio/video streaming file if the player connection speed is not fast enough to
accept all video data.