Streaming Video over the Internet

With the ever-growing popularity of sites for sharing video content, such as Youtube, video making is hitting the masses.  However, when considering publishing video content, you have to consider 3 things,

1) shooting the video;

2) editing the video to make it into a refined product; and

3) how to transmit the video to other people.

The logical place to actually start is to consider how you are going to transmit the video as this may impact on your choices for the others.  Consider whether you want to have mass market appeal for your finished video, or whether it is just intended to share it with a few friends.  This will affect how high quality you want the video to appear and how much time and expense you are willing to put into it.

Video Transmission Methods

There are two ways of transmitting video over an internet connection, the best quality video (at present) require you to download the video in its entirety, before it can be played.  This obviously suffers from requiring long download times (even short videos can be several megabytes) and also storage space. 

The other method is video streaming, whereby only a small portion of the video is downloaded onto the computer at any one time, in a read ahead buffer, which is then continually updated whilst the video stored in the buffer is shown on-screen.  With slow connections, this can cause images to jump, or appear to stop altogether for long periods and can also lead to a loss of synchronisation between the sound and picture.

Displaying any form of video over an internet connection is problematic, due to the sheer volume of information required to build each frame of the image. For example, PAL TV (the standard in most of Europe), comprises 768x576 pixels at 25 frames per second and 16 bits per pixel.  The compression to enable this to be transmitted over the internet, is achieved using what is known as a "Codec" (compressor/ decompressor) routine.  At present, Forbidden Technologies have created a Codec which supports 376x280 pixels at 25 frames per second, although this can be de-compressed to larger display sizes, which are a multiple of this.  However, this requires good quality, fast internet connections and computers if the picture is to appear anywhere near natural.  It is however, a big step-up and shows that good internet video quality is achievable without the need for a broadband connection.

Watching videos on Mobile Devices Such as Sony PSP, mobile phones and pocket PCs (PDAs)

There are various ways of getting video onto a mobile device - you can either point your mobile device at a website which streams video over the mobile phone network (GPRS), ask someone to bluetooth (or even viewtooth) a video directly to your device, or download the video onto your PC and convert it to your mobile device.  Companies such as PQ DVD offer software specifically designed to convert DVD movies onto various mobile devices, such as the Sony PSP, Pocket PC, Palm devices and Apple's video iPod.  However, this relies on you being able to get hold of the video on DVD or video files (for example .wmv, .avi, .mpg, .mpeg, .rm, .rmvb, Tivo2go formats) on your PC and so is not instantaneous.

That said, the software provided by PQ DVD is easy to use and low cost.

The other option, which allows you to access video directly, without needing a computer or broadband connection, is to watch videos that are streamed over GPRS (the mobile phone network).

Using the online video publishing and editing tool (FORScene) you can easily publish your video in various formats, including ready for mobile or website streaming, or as a PODCast for the new Apple Video iPod.  Videos published as PODCasts are automatically uploaded to iTunes ready for download onto a Video iPod.

Shooting Your Video

Having decided on how you intend to allow people to view the end video, you will need to bear in mind the amount of storage space and bandwidth available for your video, and then the quality of the video you wish to produce.

You can use a digital video recorder, a digital camera or even a camera enabled mobile phone, although the digicam will provide the best quality output, closely followed by some of the newer mobile phones, and with the digital cameras providing probably the lowest quality. If you have an analogue camcorder (one that uses VHS, VHS-C, SVHS-C, 8mm, or Hi8 tape), you can still get your videos onto the internet. It will require an extra step and some additional equipment, though, since these camcorders are not usually equipped with computer connections. You will need to digitize the video with a converter box, which will convert the analogue signal from the camcorder to a digital signal that the computer can understand.

Recommended guidelines are:

• Shoot in strong lighting conditions.
• Avoid using a heavily patterned or moving background.
• Always use a tripod.
• Avoid pans, zooms and dissolves.
• Minimise the number of cuts.
• Use full frame close-ups sparingly.
• Use a reflector to throw light into the eyes: you should be able to see a glint in the eye.
• Use a boom or lapel microphone.

Of course, the more practised you are, the better the output will be, so try to shoot the video from different angles to get different lighting effects and to provide a range of film from which you can edit the final video.

Editing Your Video

This is the part of creating a video which tends to create the steepest learning curve and can be expensive.  Although some newer computers come complete with video editing software (such as Apple's iMovie or Windows MovieMaker) this can be very difficult to control and to get the sort of output you require.  Nero 7 Premium also includes a video editor within its various items of software, but once you are getting away from the simple end of the market, it can be a jump into several £100s to purchase professional editing suites.

This is where Forbidden Technologies' solution comes into its own - you can use FORScene as an online editing solution - again this is accessed via any Java enabled internet browser and you purchase minutes of editing time at low cost.  The user interface is exceptionally easy to comprehend and can be learnt in less than an hour.  It also has many powerful features which are normally only seen in the high end editing suites used by television companies (indeed many TV companies have started to adopt this as the standard).  This is ideal for editing videos prior to uploading them to the YouTube website.

There is also now the option of using FORupload (formerly called FORdv) - a free Windows or MAC based software package which will compress the feed from a DV tape player, or a mini-DV camera connected to the PC via Firewire.  This will obviously take quite a lot of processing power and you are charged at £1 per minute (or part minute) of source material digitised.  This is then published to your FORScene account.  FORupload even allows you to upload high definition Quicktime files into your FORScene account, which allows 80-90% of editing for high definition to take place using FORscene on PCs or Macs, and for the program to be finished on native high definition systems, such as FCP.  Once on the FORScene server, the video can be edited directly via an internet browser.

Features of FORScene

• Ability for several people to work on the same video simultaneously from any location in the world
• Support for PAL and NTSC broadcasting standards
• Logging of changes and edit points including timecodes
• Storyboard mode included to provide an easy way of creating, selecting and reordering shots
• Video editing can begin even whilst the video is still being uploaded to the server
• Online chat with other editors enabling close working
• Ability to add sub-titles in various languages (user can switch between them as video plays)
• Slideshow can be added alongside the video and synchronised - slides can also contain links to external web sites
• Company logo can be added to the video - to provide a hot link to your website (and helping to circumvent problems with illegal distribution).
• The company logo and video controls only appear when a mouse is placed over the video

It would be interesting to know how easy it would be to switch between actual video streams to allow the user to switch sound to a different language also.

Once your video has been edited, it can then easily be published to a website, for use in an email, or advertising banner, or in mobile phone format.

Since releasing the first versions of their videos, Forbidden Technologies have improved video quality and download times greatly, and have now reached a stage whereby the videos are easy to watch at any size and certainly the smaller display sizes are at least equal to the quality which you would expect via the best of any other web streaming technology.

If you prefer, you can submit the video which you want to include on a website (on standard S-VHS / Betacam SP , DV, mini-DV or even high quality AVI files on CD) to Forbidden Technologies for them to compress the video.  They will then send it back to you over the internet, with a player embedded into the video, ready for upload to a web-site.  Videos are made in a resolution of 376x280 pixels, at 25 frames per second for the internet (both narrowband and broadband), 320x240 (or 160x120) pixels at 12.5 frames per second for PDAs or 160x120 pixels at 12.5 frames per second for mobile phones.  Charges are based on the length of the video to be converted (£100+VAT per minute) and the number of times the video is downloaded (£250+VAT for the first 10,000 uses, negotiable after that).  Both prices are as at the time of writing this review.  Unfortunately, no information is provided on the cost of having a video re-processed to take advantage of later versions of the Codec and/or the player itself.

Demonstrations of Forbidden Technologies Videos

Demonstrations of the power and ease of the Forbidden Technologies' video system can be seen on the following sites:

• Forbidden Technologies own website
• Travel Television - Look for the video blogs
• The AA's One In Twelve Web Site
• Simply Stream TV
• Save the Children's Eye to Eye website