Archive for the ‘Technical Info’ Category

Technical information relating to content delivery networks and live and on demand streaming of video and audio content.

How Hard Is Live Streaming?

Decided it was time to top up my understanding of PlanetStream’s live streaming service and so spent some time with the fount of all such knowledge, PlanetStream’s very own Matt Pygram. He started off by explaining how you can simply reduce the process to three elements: A camera A computer An internet connection The camera [...]

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Streaming Media Explained

When discussing any technology that changes and evolves as fast as online streaming it can often be difficult for those who join the conversation late on. In many cases at least some understanding of the basics is essential to form any kind of successful dialogue. Click here for a brief overview of Streaming Media

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PlanetStream System Features

Did you know that years have been spent developing the PlanetStream Control Panel through our experience of working with customers on all types of projects. From small private weddings transmitted to an audience of one who couldn’t make it on the day to large corporate events being transmitted globally to thousands of viewers we’ve learnt [...]

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Why pay for streaming when YouTube is free?

We are often asked why people should pay us for hosting streaming video when YouTube is free. It used to be easy to answer because the quality was so poor on YouTube but that’s not so clear cut any more. There are three main issues: 1. Unlike PlanetStream, YouTube give no guarantee of service or [...]

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Choosing Your File Format

What file type should you use to stream in? This is a regular question I get asked by PlanetStream clients, and an important consideration that can be best answered by looking at your individual requirements and the goals you’re looking to achieve from video streaming. Choosing the file type is important as you want to [...]

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Bandwidth Calculations

A question I’m asked a lot by PlanetStream clients is “How much bandwidth do I need?” Sometimes this question is akin to the old chestnut “how long is a piece of string”, so I’ve come up with some rough calculations to help you along. It all depends on the amount of viewers you’re expecting to [...]

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Microsoft Silverlight

A lot of people are talking about Microsoft Silverlight. Will it challenge the (alleged) superiority of Flash? Here are a few links to fill in some of the gaps. Wiki entry on Silverlight A (not very good) site built using Silverlight Geeky forum discussing the bits that don’t work (most of it?) Any more insights [...]

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Embed Microsoft Windows Media Player into your webpage

I receive a lot of questions from customers who want their On-demand videos to be easily accessible for a wide range of clients, family etc. on the Web. As most streaming multimedia files are in one of the three major formats — Microsoft Windows Media, Apple’s QuickTime, or RealAudio/Video – it can be difficult to [...]

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How Much Disk Space For Streaming Files?

The amount of disk space you need to store your streaming media files depends on two things. Firstly the type of file you are using – Real, Windows Media, Quicktime, Flash, mp3, etc. Secondly it depends on the bit rate of the streaming file. The higher the bit rate, the better the quality, the bigger [...]

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Viewing streams from behind a firewall

Most business users of the internet will access the net via a network connection. this means they will almost invariably be sat behind a firewall. We can overcome this by streaming via http protocol which is what your web browser uses. So if you are behind a firewall but can still browse the web, you [...]

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