As more and more people are logging onto their computers, a dramatic change in the use of video has become apparent. Traditionally, video was used primarily in the television industry and in the homes of consumers in personal camcorders and VCRs. Video was stored and distributed on some sort of videotape whether the format was high-quality Beta or standard consumer preference, VHS. This format was fine for those needs. As computer technology advanced, however, the format of video for use on computers had to change. Not only has video been transformed from analog to digital, but storage methods also have changed. Videotape has certain limitations sometimes directly related to its physical characteristics, which deems it fragile and likely to damage by natural wear and tear. In the past few years, video has found a new home on CD-ROMs, which is a much sturdier form of storage. This format has increased the physical life of video, but it is an expensive method of distribution and currently is available only for viewing short clips. These limitations have contributed to the need for an inexpensive, immediate form of video, which has led to the most recent format: computer or server-based video.
Video on the Internet brings "on demand" access and increases interactivity from multiple client workstations. The same can be said for intranet users. Video is already a useful tool for training new employees, conducting presentations, and video-conferencing. Imagine the same tool used on a computer, in a form that's less expensive and more efficient. For example, if a company has offices throughout the country and is often hiring new employees, the use of a training video might be a necessity. Each time a company policy changes or executive offices change, however, the training video is not only re-edited but also redistributed, which is a costly task, considering that the tape purchases and dubbing fees can run into the thousands. This overhead can be eliminated with the use of video on an intranet. After the tape has been re-edited, the only cost is the time it takes to upload the video onto the server. The dubbing and distribution has been virtually eliminated. Time has not been wasted in the mailing process. The new video can be uploaded in one office and downloaded for viewing in another office across the country within the same hour. All offices or divisions have an up-to-date copy immediately.
The same advantages hold true for educational facilities that use video to give campus tours. Many universities have facilities branched off into different parts of the country or even the world, and in many cases, each campus has its own video tour. Then, for example, if a prospective student in the United States wants to tour the school's campus in Europe for study abroad, the video via the school's intranet allows the student to access up-to-date information.
Another major use of video is in presentations. Company employees are always presenting their ideas to potential clients, company executives, and board members. The use of video in their presentations is an efficient way of communicating complicated ideas and product changes to the audience. Video on an intranet could be easily accessed by several different presenters in different meetings. With video-conferencing, a company could also eliminate the need for travel among offices. In this instance, two people in two different offices could meet live, both seeing and hearing one another, and at the same time could have the option of recording the meeting so that anyone who was unable to be there could view the recording later. Many universities already use this method for long-distance learning, in which students gather in one classroom on one campus and the professor is in another on a different campus. The professor often is instructing several groups of students at the same time, allowing for interaction that otherwise would be impossible.
The intranet allows myriad video applications for both business and educational sectors of society. This new video technology can be stored on the same servers on which other software applications and files are kept. The tools for creating and playing video on intranets is the same as for the Internet.
Until recently, writing and producing video for distribution over the Internet, or the intranet, was different from creating video for regular distribution on VHS format. The current standard for transmission speeds on personal computers is the range from 1 fps (frame per second) to 10 fps. Compare this to real-time or actual video as viewed on TV programs or movie rentals, which are approximately 29.9 fps. Obviously, video is transmitted slower on computers than on television.
When video is transmitted, it is re-created on the client's workstation one pixel at a time. Pixels are dots of color information that can actually be seen if viewed at a close enough range. With a still image like a photograph, after the pixels are re-created, they remain intact until the user manipulates them in graphics packages such as Adobe Photoshop or Fractal Painter. With video, however, the pixels are constantly re-created because of the movement in the frames. Movement becomes a constant blur, defeating the purpose of using video. Until early 1996, when Starlight Networks announced its technology for downloading real-time video (30 fps) over intranets, the best way to produce a video for intranet use was to limit the use of zooms, pans, and color. Essentially, a "talking head" as often seen in documentaries, newscasts, and interviews would transmit better than most other video images. This is because the limited movement in video decreases the number of pixels that must be re-created during transmission, thus decreasing the chances of a blurred image. If you fear that the piece will be too boring to use, set up the production using two or three static shots: a close-up, a long-shot, and a medium shot. Cut between the three shots and work with what is available. Because the complete availability of real-time video tools from Starlight Networks is unknown, I advise using these tips while creating your intranet video.
After a piece is written and produced on standard video formats such as SVHS or Beta, it is time to convert it from analog to digital. Different software is available for the conversion and editing process, but the most popular is Adobe Premiere. This package is an editing system available on both PC and Mac platforms. It is ideal for corporations because it is an inexpensive way of combining video, graphics, and special effects in-house with the same professional quality as a post-production facility can produce. The following tables show the minimum system requirements for installing and using Premiere. To use this system, you must install a new type of video board with frame-capture capabilities on your computer.
Recommended Macintosh System Requirements
| Macintosh 68020-68040 | 4 MB of application RAM |
| Power Macintosh | 6 MB of RAM and an 80 MB hard drive; or, for full-screen video, 16 MB of RAM and a 500 MB hard drive Apple System Software version 7.0 or higher CD-ROM drive (for Deluxe CD-ROM) |
Recommended Windows System Requirements
Pentium(TM) processor or i486 processor
DOS 5.0 or higher
Microsoft Windows 3.1 or higher with 8 MB of RAM with a 100 MB hard drive; or, for full-screen video, 16 MB of RAM and a 500 MB hard drive
CD-ROM drive (for Deluxe CD-ROM)
24-bit monitor
The following packages are compatible with either Macintosh or Windows for playback, manipulation of images, and creation of credits within the video:
Macintosh Compatibility
| Images | Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator PhotoCD |
| Sound | AIFF Audio CD Sound Designer SoundEdit files |
| Video | Adobe Premiere Targa QuickTime movie files QuickTime-compatible digital-video cards |
Windows Compatibility
| Images | Adobe Photoshop |
| Sound | WAV audio files AIFF audio files |
| Video | Microsoft Video for Windows (AVI) Apple QuickTime for Windows (MOV) Adobe Filmstrip, Autodesk Animator (FLC, FLI) Targa Digital-video cards compatible with Microsoft Video for Windows Adobe Premiere |
Step-by-step tutorials and instructions are available for installation, conversion, and creation of your videos with each of these software packages.
QuickTime's current version for Mac is QuickTime 2.1; for Windows, it's QuickTime 2.0.3. This software has a third track, Sprite, that allows animation of any image in a movie file with the use of a basic editor like MoviePlayer. Previously, only two tracks were available for video and audio, but now four different tracks are designated for text, pictures, sounds, and time codes, all controllable by the user. Playback speed, image size, and the capability to have multiple movies playing in one window also are controllable. This software offers the user several other benefits, such as the ability to work with text in a word processor and bring it back into QuickTime without losing the video format. QuickTime claims that Sprite also provides the first level of interactivity within digital movies. And this version also offers better playback. As with Premiere, before using this package, you must convert your video from analog to digital format and then import it into QuickTime as either a movie or a PICT file.
An entirely different process is necessary if you want to create MPEG video from UNIX image files. First, analog video in Y, U, and V files must be converted. Pbmtoyuvsplit is a typical software package, available through the Netpbm toolkit, that performs this conversion for you. The next step is to encode the Y, U, and V files by using another software package, called MPEG. Another MPEG encoder, called mpeg_encode, also is available; this one does not require a pbmplus package, because all necessary libraries are included. The next step is to find an MPEG display program, such as Mpeg Play, which is another software package commonly used for this step. All this software can be downloaded via the Web.
Live video is now available through several software packages. Following is a brief description of the major players.
StreamWorks, developed by Xing Technology Corporation, is the first commercially available software for worldwide and local area network delivery of live and on-demand video. NBC uses StreamWorks to broadcast financial news programming to subscribers in the United States and Europe. Imagine the benefits to large companies and banks of having up-to-the-minute financial news running in a small window on employees' computers while they work in another package.
Unlike the current tightly coupled point-to-point client/server communication, StreamWorks "streams" its media, which allows the user to view and hear the data as it is being transmitted instead of waiting for it to download to the hard drive to be played back later. StreamWorks uses a client/server media distribution architecture that operates independently or complements existing WWW HTTP/HTML architectures on local area networks, private-data wide area networks, and public-data wide area networks.
StreamWorks uses the MPEG international standards for video and audio compression from UNIX and Windows NT servers. When used with the WWW, the software augments existing WWW architectures by providing CGI to existing WWW servers, and view extensions to popular Web browsers. In addition, it uses standard TCP/IP network protocols and "multicast IP" protocols for data delivery. This method allows multiple users to simultaneously view and hear the same data streams without duplication of data. Figure 26.1 shows a typical StreamWorks configuration.
StreamWorks' benefits include compatibility with existing TCP/IP networks, including Ethernet, ATM, FDDI, ISDN, T1, and others. It adds live and on-demand video and audio services to private and public WANs and LANs without infrastructure changes, and it has low-overhead 3 percent to 5 percent video and audio streams that are fully routable. Network congestion is controlled by on-the fly birthrate reduction of video and audio streams. The streams are scalable from full-rate down to ISDN BRI (56 to 128 Kbps) and below (as low as 8.5 Kbps with LBR audio). Servers can be distributed for load balancing and stream caching. The client systems include software-only accelerated video and audio decoders. The compressed video and audio streams are compliant with MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 international standards.
Here are the URLs for two different galleries maintained by StreamWorks. For multimedia sites, surf to
http://www.xingtech.com/streams/info/swSites.html
which contains various sites using the StreamWorks technology in a multimedia fashion, and
http://www.xingtech.com/streams/info/swLive.html
which has sites using the technology live.
Pricing for StreamWorks depends on the system on which it will run and the package needed. StreamWorks ranges from $1800 for its file transmit system to $50,000 for its network servers.
VDOLive, shown in Figure 26.2, is a new technology developed by VDOnet Corporation to transmit video and audio over the Internet or any other TCP/IP network. It also uses client/server architecture in which the VDOLive Player is the client and the VDOLive Server is, well, the server. The current VDOLive Tools available with the VDOLive Server-to convert VHS/Beta videotape to a format compatible for use on VDOLive programs-must be used with VDOLive. The VDOLive Video Server allows users to capture, compress, and store audio and video to provide real-time playback.
Figure 26.2: An example of VDOLive Player as used on VDOLive's Web site.
The following operating systems can run the VDOLive Video Server:
MS Windows NT
Sun Solaris 2.4 (or higher)
SunOS 4.1.3
SGI Irix 5.3 (or higher)
FreeBSD 2.1
Linux (a.out and ELF format)
The VDOLive Player allows users to receive and view the video clips while being transmitted. VDOLive Player transmits at 2 fps with a 14.4 Kbps modem, and a 28.8 modem transmits at up to 10 fps; an ISDN line transmits up to 20 fps. Currently, the VDOLive Player can run on any Power Mac. Following are the system requirements for using the VDOLive Player on a PC:
486 DX2 66 MHz or above
MS Windows 3.1x with MS Video for Windows installed
Windows 95 (video for Windows is built in)
WWW browser capable of viewing graphics
8 MB RAM
Sound card
14.4 Kbps or faster modem or LAN connection to the Internet
The benefits of using VDOLive Servers and Players include the capability to capture, digitize, compress, distribute, and view video over local and wide area networks using one system. Additionally, they play back at real time, and they need to store only one copy of each video. The VDOLive Video Server works with any Web server to add video to any Web site. Pricing for VDOLive products is based on either a one-time fee or yearly fees. Currently, the yearly fees include unlimited technical support via e-mail and phone, free access to VDOLive Products' WWW FAQ, and updates and patches for one year. For one-time purchase, the price ranges from $1,200 to $10,000, depending on the package. The VDOLive Player is free.
As I said, video must be compressed to be transmitted. A common package used for cross-platform, software-only, scalable compression-decompression video is Radius Cinepak. QuickTime, Microsoft Video for Windows, and several video-game companies, such as Atari and Sega, use Cinepak for their video compression.
Playback of Cinepak compressed video depends on the licensed platform. For example, QuickTime requires Apple Macintosh and MacOS systems, and a Windows OS platform requires Video for Windows or QuickTime for Windows. No additional hardware is necessary. Video can be decompressed on machines as low as LC III or a 20 MHz 386.
Cinepak plays back at a higher frame rate because it uses a vector quantization algorithm. It also uses very little processor bandwidth. Cinepak also offers online support for developers and is free to all content authors, developers, and users of any licensed computer platform.
Besides QuickTime, StreamWorks, and VDOLive, other video viewers exist. Xing Corporation offers the XingMPEG Player, which was the first software for adding MPEG playback capabilities to multimedia computers. Figure 26.3 shows an example of a Web site using the XingMPEG Player. The XingMPEG Driver is a high-performance Software MPEG Decoder capable of full-screen, full-motion, and full-color video playback with full-precision 16-bit 44 KHz stereo audio playback. It also offers support for VideoCD, CD-I movie, and KaraokeCD playback. For more specific information on using and configuring the XingMPEG Player, browse Xing's Web site at
http://www.xingtech.com/xingmpeg/index.html
Figure 26.3: Access America's Web site requires MPEG Player to view its movie clips.
Following are the system requirements for using XingMPEG Player:
Minimum
386 CPU
4 MB RAM
Microsoft Windows 3.1 or higher version
Recommended
Pentium CPU
8 MB RAM
Microsoft Windows 3.1x
Video Accelerated VGA card with DCI driver
6-bit audio
The use of video on intranets opens up another dimension of communicating over intranets. Adding video applications to your intranet offers another avenue to support established organization programs, such as training, presentations, meetings, and conference calls. The packages mentioned here can get you started in creating and distributing video. The near future will bring the availability of packages developed by companies such as Starlight Networks that will allow you to distribute your video in television-like real-time transmission.