From: Larry Bouthillier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: mpeg vs surestream
Jay,
Both are good answers, depending on your needs. Here's some points to ponder:
-- Real SureStream at 300kbps will look better than MPEG1 at 300kbps.
-- SureStream will give you the option of graceful degradation of
bandwidth and multi-bitrate encoding into one file.
-- RealServer will serve a load of MPEG1 at high bitrates, but you'll get
more total aggregate bandwidth from your server with SureStream streaming. It
shouldn't matter, but we can do more bps of SureStream than we can of MPEG1
from the same box. If you're looking at doing >150Mbps from one server, you
may need to do some load testing with MPEG1 to make sure it's going to work on
your configuration at at your chosen bandwidth.
-- MPEG1 is a real industry standard. If you have a long-term perspective
on your content, you should ask yourself if, in ten years, you're likely to be
able to play your content on any given platform that may dominate at that
time. I'd say that in ten years you WILL be able to play MPEG1 on probably
any device, or convert MPEG1 files to any given format. You may not be able
to say that as confidently for your RealVideo version X files.
If your time horizon is long and you have an archival mission in addition to
your immediate delivery mission, you may want to either a) encode and stream
MPEG1 from your RealServer rather than RealVideo; or b) (my recommendation)
encode to MPEG1 at high bitrate (1.5Mbps) and transcode to RealVideo for
delivery. This way you can deliver the very best streaming format today, but
you can always go back to your original MPEG1 assets for viewing or updating
your low-bandwidth streaming files. We often re-encode older RealVideo 4 or 5
content into spiffy new G2 versions with scripts that use the command-line
RealEncoder to convert the original MPEGs into new G2 files in an unattended
operation. We can redo RealVideo 5 that was done at 112kbps to new RealG2
files at 350kbps, and it looks great and takes advantage of all the SureStream
services. Later, if we want to re-encode again into Real Version 8 at
800kbps, we can do that no problem. If we had to go back to tape masters to
do this, it could not possibly be done cost-effectively. You get the best of
both worlds, but you also have to have storage (and backup capacity) for lots
of 1.5Mbps MPEG files. I guess at EMC you probably know where to find that,
huh? ;-)
Larry
RealForum wrote:
> From: "hardikar, jayant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: mpeg vs surestream
>
> Pardon me if this is a very basic question. If I can stream mpeg at 300 =
> kbps
> and I can also stream the same content as Real SureStream at 300 kbps, =
> why
> would I want to go one way or the other? If I want to stick with true
> international standards, would I not choose mpeg?
>
> thanks!
>
> jay
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