On 9/22/06 12:06, "josh zeidner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Steven, I think I misphrased that. This may be better: > > They claim that using "HTTP streaming" effects the quality of the video in > some way. > Hmmm. If you can find the exact reference I would like to take a look at exactly what they are claiming. In anycase the "quality" of video is a function of how it was originated (shot and produced) and then how it was encoded. Streaming does not introduce anything into either of these processes. Streaming can mean that frames are dropped which results in choppy audio and video (even out-of-sync audio and video when the player drops video frames while attempting to maintain playback rates) which is certainly unpleasant and not a "quality" experience. Adobe (and others) provide means to overcome these bandwidth problems, two of the most common are client caching and bandwidth negotiation. Client-caching means that the stream is delivered faster than realtime so that the client always has a buffer of material to playback (ususally 10s). This smoothes out the highs and lows of streaming bandwidth. Actually most of the time playback is only possible when the client has the mandated buffer. Bandwidth negotiation in its simplest form is like ping. Most streaming platforms which offer bandwidth negotiation provide a handshake which measures the ping time between client and server. Depending on this value the client could get a >128Kbps stream or a <32Kbps stream. Servers like Adobe can provide several different predetermined bandwidth streams from a single source. FMS can not only set the stream size initially but can dynamically change this during the streaming episode. BUT one thing puzzles me. You would think Adobe would not make such a big deal about the quality of their streaming server for two reasons. One is as I have mentioned they don't have multicast or even multicast managment API. This immediately removes them from the serious, enterprise tier and firmly on the small corporate tier. But more importantly is that FMS does not support Quality of Service (QoS) because Adobe uses its own proprietary (again) streaming protocol, RTMP. I'm pretty sure (99.9%) that Cisco, Brocade, et al only provide QoS for standards based streaming protocols, RTP/RTSP. So it is more than slightly oxymoronic that Adobe claims a higher level of quality when they don't even support QoS. have a great day! ... get some work done;) Steven --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
