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| Using PlayStream's Small Business Services Content
Delivery Network for delivering video on-demand
is easy. Capture your media content then encode it
into the format of choice. Upload your digitized file
into our Content Delivery Network and your content
is replicated to the edge of the network in real-time.
If time or experience is an issue,
PlayStream can capture and encode your media for
you in any format we deliver at a competitive rate.
After uploading your content to PlayStream's Small Business Services Content
Delivery Network, your content is available to embed
or link-to within your website, allowing complete
flexibility over how you integrate media into your
web presence. |
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| 1. Capturing Your Media To A Digital
Format |
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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.
Examples of typical video capture devices are a
firewire port (firewire card) or a video capture
card. Common video capture cards that we know
work are the Osprey 220 from ViewCast
or capture cards from Winnov
or Pinnacle. |
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| 2. Converting Your Media With An
Encoding Station |
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| 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. That is if you are a Windows user encoding
Windows Media content, we suggest you use the Windows
Media Encoder. If you are converting your content
to RealMedia, please use the newest encoder available
for your operating system at www.real.com.
If you are converting your content to the QuickTime
Streaming format use QuickTime Pro (with the Sorenson
Codec) or Discreet
cleaner. |
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| 3. Uploading Your Media To Our Content
Delivery Network |
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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 PlayStream account or via FTP
at ftp.playstream.com with your user name and
password. When you upload your content, it goes
directly to the PlayStream Seattle data center
and then is picked up by our replication process
and copied to the PlayStream Atlanta data center.
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.
By directing your audience member to the closest
data center, we cut down on the time it takes
to deliver your stream to them. Once the closest
data center has been established, the streaming
video or streaming audio request is sent down one of the many backbones
we are connected to via Internap's advanced "Synchronous-When-Optimal"
routing service.
Our system delivers your media by avoiding the
often congested public and private peering points
of the Internet, thus greatly increasiing delivery
performance and reducing problems such as rebuffering. |
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| 4. Delivering Your Media To Your
Audience |
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| When a streaming media Player makes
a connection to one of our streaming servers via our
easy link technology or a reference file (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 as it's 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. |