Mastering Internet Video A Guide... | Buy

A comprehensive reference explaining all aspects of adding video to a website, and covering all major vendors' technologies.

Mastering Internet Video: A Guide to Streaming and On-Demand Video About the Author

Damien is an entrepreneur with 15 years of experience making computers talk to each other. He cofounded static.com (also known as Blue Falcon Networks, which is now akimbo.com) in 1995, where in his long tenure as Chief Tech-nology Officer, he led the development of numerous technologies including an online service, networked multiplayer games, and peer-to-peer cost-reduction software for video streaming. In 2002, he started Robot Army Corporation (http://www.robotarmy.com), a software consultancy and R&D house, which continues to develop large-scale media delivery software among other secret projects. In 2004, Robot Army spun off Carbot, Inc. (http://www.carbotpc.com), which designs and manufactures in-car entertainment of computers. Damien holds a bachelor or science degree in computer science/engineering from UCLA.

Video Preparation and Capture

1

(54)

Video Basics

2

(35)

Frame Rate

2

(1)

Flicker

3

(1)

Television Video Versus Film

3

(3)

Interlaced and Progressive Video Tradeoffs

6

(1)

Film-to-Video Conversion

7

(1)

Film-to-Video-to-Film Conversion

8

(1)

Frame Shape (Aspect Ratio)

9

(1)

Analog Versus Digital

10

(3)

Analog-to-Digital (A/D) Conversion

13

(3)

Resolution

16

(2)

Scan Lines (Vertical Resolution)

18

(1)

Lines of Horizontal Resolution

19

(3)

Higher and Lower Resolution Sources

22

(1)

Color Resolution

23

(1)

Connectors and Image Quality

24

(5)

Rectangular Pixels and Non-Square Projection

29

(1)

Television

29

(2)

Film

31

(2)

Broadcast Standards

33

(3)

Video Basics Summary

36

(1)

Capturing Video

37

(14)

Digital Tape Formats

39

(3)

Digital Video Cameras

42

(2)

Film Formats

44

(3)

Analog Tape Formats and Cameras

47

(2)

Analog Capture

49

(2)

Computer Graphics

51

(1)

Creating New Internet Video Content

51

(3)

Audience Internet Connection

52

(1)

Shooting

52

(1)

Editing

53

(1)

Summary

54

(1)

Video Compression

55

(56)

Compression: How Much Is Bad?

56

(1)

What Codec Should I Use?

57

(3)

The Decision-Making Process

60

(6)

Delivery Method

61

(1)

Bandwidth Target

62

(2)

Player Choice

64

(1)

Codec/Format

65

(1)

Encoding Systems

66

(1)

Basic Settings

66

(6)

Balancing Audio and Video Bit Rates

67

(1)

Codecs

68

(1)

Frame Rate

68

(2)

Video Size

70

(2)

Quality

72

(1)

Advanced Settings

72

(4)

Quality-Based Versus Bit Rate-Based Compression

73

(1)

Constant Bit Rate (CBR)

74

(1)

Variable Bit Rate (VBR)

74

(1)

1-Pass and 2-Pass Encoding

74

(1)

Key Frames

74

(1)

Frame Dropping

75

(1)

Bandwidth Scalability

75

(1)

A Brief History of Internet Codecs

76

(11)

Early 1980s: DAT and CD Audio

78

(1)

1984: Macintosh Audio

78

(1)

Mid-1980s: GIF

78

(2)

Mid-1980s: Amiga MOD and MIDI

80

(1)

Late 1980s: Videoconferencing and H.261

80

(1)

Early 1990s: JPEG

81

(1)

Early 1990s: QuickTime

82

(1)

Early 1990s: Cinepak

82

(1)

1991: MPEG-1

82

(1)

1995: H.263 and MPEG-2

82

(1)

1996: Sorenson

83

(1)

1996 to the Present: MP3

83

(1)

1997 to the Present: Commercial Efforts

84

(1)

1997 to the Present: Macromedia Flash

85

(1)

1998: Quake

85

(1)

2000: Scalable Codecs

86

(1)

Present: MPEG-4

87

(1)

Video Compression: Under the Hood

87

(17)

Spatial Compression: JPEG

89

(1)

Step 1: Color Space Transform

89

(4)

Step 2: Downsampling

93

(2)

Step 3: Frequency Transform

95

(4)

Step 4: Quantization

99

(1)

Step 5: Output

100

(1)

Temporal Compression: MPEG

100

(4)

Recommending a Codec for Your Content

104

(6)

Summary

110

(1)

Video Storage File Formats

111

(32)

An Ideal File Format for Video Storage

112

(10)

Requirements of Internet Video File Formats

112

(2)

Store Compressed Audio/Video

114

(1)

Efficient Playback

115

(1)

Efficient Scrubbing

115

(1)

Efficient Seeking

116

(1)

Defining Codecs

117

(1)

Other Header Information: Metadata

117

(1)

Non-Video Content

118

(1)

Multiple Bit Rates

118

(1)

Protecting Files Against Unauthorized Use

118

(1)

Video Editing

119

(1)

Checking File Integrity

120

(1)

Packetization

121

(1)

Common Internet File Formats

122

(5)

Internet Video Container File Formats

123

(2)

Simple Raw or Stream Video Formats

125

(1)

Internet Playlist, Index, and Scripting Formats

126

(1)

File Formats Versus Codecs: ``How Do I Play Back an AVI?''

127

(3)

A Brief History of File Formats

130

(9)

Apple's QuickTime: MOV Files (.MOV)

131

(1)

Audio-Video Interleaved: AVI Files (.AVI)

132

(1)

MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (.MPG, MPEG, DAT, and .VOB)

133

(1)

Progressive Networks: Real Audio and Real Video (.RA, .RM, and .RAM)

134

(1)

Advanced Streaming Format and Windows Media Format (.WMV, .WMA, .WMX, .ASF)

135

(1)

DivX: A De Facto Standard

136

(1)

Shockwave/Flash (.SWF, .FLA, .FLV)

137

(1)

Simple Multimedia Integration Language: SMIL (.SML, .SMIL)

138

(1)

MPEG-4 (.MPG, .MP4)

138

(1)

Common Features

139

(3)

Under the Hood

140

(2)

Summary

142

(1)

Streaming Media Server Software

143

(44)

Types of Internet Media Delivery: Streaming Versus Downloading

144

(1)

Streaming Thoroughly Defined

145

(2)

Internet Streaming Servers

147

(9)

Television Experience: Broadcast or Live Video

149

(1)

``Live'' Video

149

(4)

Video on Demand (VoD)

153

(3)

Instant Gratification: Network Condition and Bandwidth Awareness

156

(24)

Real-Time Viewing

157

(3)

Time Awareness and Real-Time Delivery

160

(1)

Throttling Down for Narrow Pipes or Clogged Connections

161

(3)

Faster Stream Starting

164

(2)

ForwardError Correction

166

(1)

Content Tracking

167

(1)

User Experience Tracking

167

(1)

Better Logging

168

(1)

Third-Party Verification and Reporting

168

(1)

More Video Standards Organizations

310

(1)

Creating MPEG Standards

311

(3)

Future-Proofing

313

(1)

Some Final Notes

314

(3)

Appendices

A Quick List of Problems and Concise Solutions

317

(38)

B The MPEG-4 Standard

355

(36)

Glossary

391

(38)

Mastering Internet Video Web Bibliography

429

(28)

Index

457

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Mastering Internet Video: A Guide to Streaming and On-Demand Video Introduction Goals of This Book This book has the primary (and ambitious) goal of making Internet video understandable to anyone, through a carefully planned, complete, and entertaining sequence of definitions and illustrations. Perhaps Internet video will eventually be easier to understand, well explained in a tidy package that protects the new student from all the gory details. Right now, the beginner who tries to dissect the marketing claims made by a variety of vendors finds himself quickly put to sleep by technical explanations in almost any direction he looks. In this book, we attempt to arm the reader with sufficient weaponry--by providing both a strong conceptual under-standing and a high-level technical understanding--to confront these gory details head-on. In addition, we intend for this book to be the basic text on the core technology of Internet video. That's a daunting task for any work with "Internet" in the title, but through our disciplined avoidance of many brand names, fleeting product lines, and easily dated technologies--and a focus on the unchanging fundamentals of these fields-- Mastering Internet Videoshould stand as an accurate description of the basics of Internet video for years to come. This is not a tutorial book. We won't walk you through the dialog boxes or tell you which buttons to push. Rather, our goal is to educate you well enough so that you know what all the options in the dialogs mean and what steps to take when you're unhappy with your initial results. Although there are many fine books on compression, networking, and video editing, this is, we believe, the first book that pulls together all these disciplines into a single coherent picture of Internet video from beginning to end. Who This Book Is For Our aim with Mastering Internet Videois to create a book that works for all the disparate specialists involved in the whole process. For the website designer or web developer, it aims to be compelling page-turner--a picture book that can be read cover to cover in a few sittings, which comfortably conveys a thorough mechanical understanding of getting video online. For the technical manager, it aims to convey a deep conceptual understanding of every knowledge domain relevant to Internet video, so that business decisions can be readily made without having to constantly defer to experts. For the venture capitalist, it aims to provide an instant mastery of a broad array of technical fields, enabling them to make more insightful decisions on where their markets of interest are headed. For the technology hobbyist, it aims to be an entertaining look inside Internet video, showing how it really works and providing a deep well of insight for intelligent cocktail party banter. For programmers and software engineers, this book aims to convey a complete, accessible grounding in all the relevant technologies of video delivery over TCP/IP networks. The hard-won collection of data in this book usually takes years to accumulate, and most of the books in the market do not attempt to give a complete picture of the art and science of Internet video. Last, but not least, this book is for the people deep in the trenches: the system administrators and people tasked with keeping large-scale Internet video services up and running while constantly improving performance, broadening their scale, and adding large amounts of new content on an almost daily basis. Organization of This Book Following is an outline of the book's content. As you can see, the first seven chapters of this book walk sequentially through the steps involved in making video available on the Internet. The final chapter discusses Internet video standards. -Chapter 1, "Video Preparation and Capture,"describes the process and technology of preparingand capturingthe video (getting high-quality video into the computer in a digital form). -Chapter 2, "Video Compression," explains video compression, the methods of making video files (which are very large) small enough to work with and deliver over the Internet. -Chapter 3, "Video Storage File Formats," describes the many different file formatsin which video is stored on a computer and their different uses. -Chapter 4, "Streaming Media Server Software," describes streaming servers,software, and hardware that is better suited for delivering real-time video data over the Internet than web servers. -Chapter 5, "Video Transport Protocols," describes video transport protocols, the languages spoken between computers when transporting video data over a network, such as the Internet. This chapter also gives an excellent tutorial on how the Internet works (and doesn't work) for real-time data delivery. -Chapter 6, "Enterprise Multicast," describes enterprise multicasting,the highly efficient video transport protocol that most closely approximates traditional television broadcasting and that is used more in the corporate environment than within the Internet at large. -Chapter 7, "Video Security and Digital Rights Management (DRM)," describes the technology behind Digital Rights Management, the tech-nologies used by content owners to control how Internet video is used by its audience. -Chapter 8, "Internet Video Standards," describes Internet video standards in general. -Appendix A, "A Quick List of Problems and Concise Solutions," offers a toolbox of solutions to the routine problems encountered in the process of setting up Internet video. The chapter also outlines many specific scenarios in which people want to use Internet video and offers several potential approaches to their implementation. -Appendix B, "The MPEG-4 Standard," discusses in more detail the MPEG-4 standard. Word Problems In the process of writing this book, the heaviest emphasis was on defining everything in an easily readable way. Each technical term is defined when it is first used. Internet video, as a subject, presents a particularly steep learning curve for many people. Some of the reasons for this are: It contains technical terms from many different fields. It is explained with poorly named, easily misunderstood, or the incorrect terms. It is clouded by marketing buzzwords that have little real meaning. Technical Terms from Too Many Different Fields As a discipline, Internet video borrows words and concepts from many different fields. Most "mature" subjects like math or physics have only one set of technical terms that you have to learn. In trying to understand Internet video, however, you instantly encounter sophisticated terminology from the fields of electronics, physics, video production, television broadcasting, telecommunications, encryption, data compression, computer networking and Internet, and computer programming. To address this problem, we've attempted to define every word in these fields with a straightforward, conceptual definition and a comprehensible explanation. Counterintuitive Naming In addition to the problem of too many technical terms, there is simply bad naming of terms. Professionals in the originating fields admit that the words have always been confusing, or that they should be renamed, but "that's what we've always called it." Sometimes the terms were invented by technicians who were already confused, and their misuse is continued as a matter of tradition. To address this problem, we've attempted not only to define these terms, but also to point out when they are poorly named, and to reiterate the explanations several di