Introduction

By Dr. Edgar Huang and Clifford Marsiglio

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
School of Informatics

A poster based on this study won Judges' Choice Award at the New Media Consortium (NMC) Summer Conference in Cleveland, OH, in June 2006. The poster can be found on the NMC Campus in Second Life.
"When I saw this report, my first thought was, 'This is it. This is what the future of scholarship will look like.' You have done a fantastic job of helping us all see how this can be done, and done well."
Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of NMC, commented on this site via an email to Dr. Edgar Huang on August 10, 2006.

In August of 2006, we completed a study that examined five video streaming technologies in terms of their image quality, streaming quality, accessibility, encoding and Web-authoring efficiency, and cost. The five technologies were Flash, QuickTime, Real, VX30 and Windows Media. For easy and fast access and interaction, we have decided to publish the study at this permanent Web site.

By June 2006, U.S. home broadband adoption had reached 60%. According to "Broadband Access and Services in the Home 2006," a report released by Leichtman Research Group, the market can expect continued growth. A 2005 study by AccuStream iMedia Research shows that the consumption of streaming videos is positively correlated to whether the consumer has a broadband connection. Therefore, for multimedia specialists and rich media content providers in different business, especially small businesses and mass media companies, knowing how to doing their streaming job right to better serve their audiences has become increasingly important. Our study has some interesting findings and conclusions regarding these streaming video technologies. You may find them immediately applicable to your daily work.

We have also constructed five tutorials, as byproducts of this study, on how to encode and Web-author with latest approaches a streaming video with each of these five streaming technologies. These tutorials are designed for broadband streaming though targeting dial-up users just involves adding a low bit rate alternative. Broadband connections come with different speeds. In order for audience with different broadband connection speeds to be able to watch video smoothly, all these tutorials show you how to encode for three different bit rates—128kbps, 384kbps and 768kbps. These tutorials demonstrate how to encode a video for on-demand use. In order to achieve the best encoding result, always encode the original video output in AVI or MOV format with a large file size. Software programs do exist that can be used to rip DVD movies so as to convert the movies into streamable movies, but this topic is beyond the scope of this Web site.

Each tutorial contains a screencast that visually demonstrates what the textual counterpart does.

A Wiki component has been included on the site to provide interaction and content improvement. You are encouraged to ask questions and share your knowledge.

We hope the findings and conclusions from our independent study, the tutorials and the future discussions in Wiki can be of use to you. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: This Web site does not mean to promote or demote any software program.