Streaming Video Simplified

Streaming video, or audio, is media that is being continuously received by, and displayed to, the end-user while it is being delivered by the provider. These, grouped together are known as streaming media. The name refers to the delivery method of the media rather than to the actual media itself. Television and radio are streaming media but here we are talking about streaming video on the internet.

With the internet came attempts to display video but little progress was made due to the lack of technology and bandwidth. Technology has overcome these problems with more powerful computers, standard protocols and formats. More homes and computers with faster CPUs can now access broadband and we now see the expansion of video on the internet.

Businesses and websites are steadily taking advantage of this booming sector. Some sites have had video on them since the technology was available, more sites are turning to video and its advantages daily while some sites may not understand the technology and prefer to remain with the written word. Having said that it is now so easy to incorporate video into websites that there is no real reason not to.

With true streaming video the end user can start watching the file almost as soon as it begins downloading. The file is sent to the user in a, more or less, constant stream, and the user watches it as it arrives. The obvious advantage with this method is that no waiting is involved. Streaming media has additional advantages such as being able to broadcast live events and sometimes referred to as a webcast or netcast. True streaming video must be delivered from a specialized streaming server. This type of streaming video is not used by most websites.

Progressive downloading, pretty much the same as HTTP streaming, enables the video to be viewed as soon as a portion of the file has been received. This simulates true streaming video but is not of the same quality but has the advantage of being able to be hosted on a normal server. This is the simplest and cheapest way to stream video from a website. Small to medium-sized websites are more likely to use this method than the more expensive streaming servers. For this method you don’t need any special type of website or host, just a host server which recognises common video file types.

Progressive download video is downloaded from start to finish, typically delivering the entire video file to a temporary file area of the viewer’s computer. After a few seconds of downloading, the video starts playing. For this reason, most viewers can’t tell whether they’re seeing progressive or streaming video. Most of the time, the download will go faster than the playback, so the media player will easily be able to keep up. If the internet connection is slow or suffers traffic congestion, then the player pauses until it once again has a few seconds of video ready to play.

To create a progressive or HTTP streaming video all you do is the following.

1. Create a video file in a common streaming media format

2. Upload the file to your web server

3. Make a simple hyperlink to the video file, or use special HTML tags to embed the video in a web page or blog post.

When the day comes that your videos are popular then you might have bandwidth issues with your hosting provider and you may need to upgrade or move to a different host and server. Hopefully that day will soon be here.

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Using Streaming Video As Web Content

Webmasters no longer need to rely on textual content, or even static graphic content for websites. Audio has never been a popular choice for the majority of websites because it can become annoying for visitors unless executed perfectly. However, thanks to the increasingly short attention span of surfers, a new technology has emerged as offering a superb alternative – streaming video content.

Catering To Your Visitors’ Needs

Video can deliver a very clear and concise message and it can do so in a short space of time. It’s possible to convey a complex message or give instruction on how to undertake a complex task in just a couple of minutes. And yet, so far, all but the biggest and the most savvy of websites have taken real advantage of this technology.

The potential of streaming video content is huge. The attention span of surfers is measured in seconds, and very few of them, and unless you can grab their attention in those crucial first few moments you’re likely to lose them forever. Video packs that punch with style and panache.

Delivering A Complex Message

Video content also helps to deliver complex messages or instructions without the need for extensive instructional articles. It can be used to cut down on the amount of support that customers require, especially if you sell software or digital products. Reduced technical support means lower costs and an improved business.

The Popularity Of Video

For an indication of how popular video content is to surfers, you need only look as far as video sharing websites like YouTube, currently ranked the 3rd most popular site on Alexa. Users regularly share videos and download and view other people’s submitted content. Google currently lists over 2 million links to http://youtube.com showing its popularity with other websites.

Despite this popularity, there really are very few websites that host their own streaming video footage. One of the reasons is that it is still an emerging technology – a lot of website owners are reserving judgement as to whether it will prove as popular as some believe. Another possible reason for its lack of use is that it is conceived to be technically difficult or expensive to create and subsequently host video clips.

Type And Cost Of Video

The type of video you intend to make will ultimately decide your budget. A video advertisement can range from tens of dollars to thousands and thousands of dollars. Video software tutorials and demonstrations, though, can be created for very little investment and they will be a popular addition to your site if made well. While there aren’t the same numbers of video content providers as there are graphic designers or web developers, the number is rising.

Do It Yourself?

The technology and the software exist for site owners to create their own video footage. Screen capture software is no longer limited to taking static snap shots of what you’re doing. Modern video screen capture software can be used to easily create step by step instructions. This software can even be found for free on the Internet, although the commercial packages do typically offer a lot more in functions and features.

Video Content To Improve Your Business

Video content can be used to market a site through video sharing networks, or to add value to your existing content. However you choose to use it, video footage is not yet a widely used form of content and you could steal a march on your competitors by including some on your own pages. Surfers love to view video because it takes less concentration and less time than reading textual content and is usually more entertaining than graphical content.

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How to Sell Your Vhs Videos

With Blue-Ray technology beating out HD DVDs for HD technology, DVDs are beginning to become a thing of the past. To be able to upgrade to the new technology if you still watch VHS videos you need to sell them quick. You are probably wondering how you can sell your VHS videos, and this article will tell you how.

The first way you can sell your VHS videos is through eBay. Many people use eBay to buy items online, it is essentially a garage sale on the internet. You are able to get everything from computer and televisions to cars and houses. This is probably one of your best bets when you are looking to get money for your VHS because it is easy to use and there are millions of people searching eBay worldwide. You should prepare yourself to not get very much money for them, but you can almost be guaranteed that you will sell them.

The second way you can make money for your VHS videos is having a garage sale. Garage sales are a great way to sell a lot of your positions in one haul. If you hold a garage sale on Friday and Saturday you will be able to have many garage sale hoppers come to your sale and you can guarantee that people will be coming around looking at your stuff. When you hold a garage sale the money has the potential to be better than eBay because you can expect to sell a lot of package deals made up of a bunch of VHS videos.

There are many sites, such as craigslist.com, that allow you to sell your VHS videos. It works like a newspaper ad, where you put your contact information, the information of your sale, and how much money you are looking for. This works similarly to eBay, where you sell your stuff online, but you are actually selling your items to people in your area, so you can have them pick it up from you and you can get the cash quickly.

VHS technology has become obsolete, first to DVDs and now to Blue-Ray DVDs. You can expect to not get very much money selling your VHS videos because the technology is out of date, but you can expect to get some money for them. Holding a garage sale, using eBay, or going to sites such as craigslist.com, you will be able to put your VHS videos on sale and with any luck you will be able to sell your VHS videos.

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Where Will We End Up? A Look into the Future of Video Games

There is no doubt that video games are in their golden age at the moment. Since 2007 sales of consoles and games have grown by 57 percent in spite of the economic downturn. During March 2008 1.7 billion dollars worth of games products were sold. The games industry is now bigger than films and is gaining more and more mainstream appeal and recognition.

Nintendo have helped to bring games to a much wider audience than was ever thought possible. Many families and older people are joining in what was traditionally a hobby for young males. The current generation of technology has pushed games further than they’ve ever been before. Games on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 are pushing graphical realism to new heights while the Wii is looking to break the boundary between virtual and real space with motion sensitive controls.

An interesting question to pose is where the next generation will go, and where video game entertainment will end up. A common theory is that they will move away from being purely games and end up as virtual reality experiences. The starting points of the necessary technologies to achieve this are already in place.

Motion sensitive controls are a significant stepping stone toward virtual reality in the home. Imagine if when playing a bowling game instead of watching the screen with cartoon characters mimicking your actions you were wearing a headset and being fed photo-realistic graphics from a first person perspective. The experience would be far more realistic than anything available at the moment.

It is my opinion that there will be two distinct directions that electronic entertainment will take. One path is that of the Wii, appealing to a mass market with easy to pick-up games that are designed for a quick dose of fun with family and friends. The other side I think will go down the ultra realistic route and end up trying to give the user a virtual reality experience. With technology as it is, the scope for providing this in the home is limited. The Wii remote requires users to physically move their bodies. Obviously this will not work in the living room once games require you to do more than swing a tennis racket or bowl a ball.

A workaround for requiring physical movement from the participants is to read brain activity. While currently the stuff of science fiction there are significant strides being made into reading human brain waves and converting them into mechanical movement. On the 28th of May 2008 the BBC posted a news article stating that scientists from the University of Pittsburgh had managed to get a monkey to control a robot arm to feed itself by just using its brain. The monkey had tiny probes the width of a human hair inserted into the primary motor cortex in order to read the electronic impulses that control movement. With a little training the monkey was able to manipulate the robotic arm as if it was its own.

Such invasive procedures are obviously out of the question for simple home use but it is certainly feasible to see the technology being adapted to read the brain from outside the head. It would be in this way that thoughts could be read to control movements in a virtual reality. This technology would also have other significant advantages, such as restoring movement to those crippled by spinal injuries and motor neurone diseases. I would see a difficulty when using these systems in separating virtual and real movements. Once trained to control movements in a virtual world with the brain would one be able to move their real body properly afterwards?

With technology such as this in place combined with ultra realistic graphics, we may see some virtual reality games created that are almost indistinguishable from real life. Would this lead to a mass migration to a virtual world where people can be as they please? Perhaps the topic for another article but certainly it is a scenario explored in many science fiction books and films.

In 1999 action film The Matrix famously told of a future in which mankind lived unknowingly in a virtual reality, their physical bodies were used to power the machines which had enslaved them. While unlikely to happen, when you read stories of Korean men starving themselves to death while playing MMO games it certainly makes you worry about how many people would abandon their bodies should such technology become available.

In reality though it is highly unlikely that virtual realities this complex will be able to exist, at least not in the foreseeable future. The computing power required to process them is trillions of times greater than what can be achieved today, with some theories suggesting that it would take a computer the size of a planet to process a virtual reality complex enough to fool the human mind.

I do think that games will reach an extremely high level of realism though, just not in entirely virtual worlds. The biggest barrier isn’t just processing power, but how to give enough feedback to trick the senses. I think that vision and sound will be relatively simple to reproduce but taste, smell and touch will be much harder. The issue of balance and orientation is a sticking point as well. Without direct input into the brain these senses may prove impossible to mimic inside a computer simulation.

Of course in the end it also comes down to what is financially viable for a company to put out and sell. The consumer will dictate the direction that games end up taking by what they’re willing to spend money on. With the dominating success of the Wii over the other platforms it would suggest that users are more comfortable using controls that mimic real life actions than they are using a traditional control pad or keyboard and mouse.

Graphics and simulations will continue to improve over time and I’m sure that one day it will be quite standard to wear a headset to play games. Whether that headset reads the thoughts of the user or not depends on whether it becomes cost effective to sell to consumers and whether people are ready to embrace the technology. I’m sure the possibility will exist at some point in the future but whether it represents the future of video games and is actually used remains debatable.

Everything considered the future of electronic entertainment is certainly a bright one. Eventually the technologies will merge and we’ll see virtual reality games integrated into TV, radio and the Internet. The only question is when all this will happen.

How Video Analytics is Changing the World of Security

Security professionals draw upon decades of training and experience when developing plans to protect sites and people. Systems they design can cover a wide range of requirements, from preventing accidental deaths in residential swimming pools, to catching thieves in retail stores, to defending high-risk facilities from attack or intrusion. However, the underlying principles for security and safety are basically the same in all applications:

- Situational Awareness: Knowing what is happening at the site, along with the expected activities and potential dangers.

- Early Warning: Providing alerts and notification before serious problems occur. The sooner you can identify potential breaches or risks, the stronger your protection will be.

- Controlling Access: Limiting those who are allowed to enter and when.

- Recording Activity: Capturing information to identify and prosecute offenders creates a significant deterrent against crime, and provides evidence for prosecuting criminals.

- Responsiveness: Preparation, training and tools to respond rapidly and appropriately when an alarm occurs.

It is rare to find a single technology that can improve every one of these five basic security functions at the same time. Video analytics are producing exactly such an impact. More importantly, systems that can extract information from video promise to bring us closer to how ideal security systems should operate:

- Unobtrusive for those who live and work on the premises.

- Automated, so they require minimal human effort when everything is normal.

- Responsive to threats early enough to prevent problems before they occur.

Advancements in all these areas created by video analytics explain why this new technology might be the most significant breakthrough for safety and protection in the last forty years. Video Analytics promises to bring us closer to this ideal solution than any prior technology. Advanced content analysis systems today already have the ability to:

- Automatically extract information from camera feeds and warn you when something might be going wrong. It is exactly like having your own digital guard.

- Alert people anywhere in the world, providing them video evidence of the detected event.

- Allow for live real-time remote viewing to track and stay in touch with what is happening.

- Open up audio loudspeaker communication with the site, so that intruders can be warned away immediately, before it is too late.

One remote guard using video analytics can now provide protection for 50 sites or more, making protection far more affordable than ever before. As importantly, all 500 to 1000 analytics managed cameras across those sites are continuously monitoring every scene, providing superior protection. Guard tour services, where guards physically walk through the premises on a cyclical basis, can see only a small percent of what is happening. This is no match for the lower cost and constant surveillance gained through video analytics.

Studies show that after 22 minutes, guards watching a video scene will miss up to 95% of all activity. The human brain is simply not designed for long periods of constant watching and waiting for something to happen. Video analytics, on the other hand, is tireless. It never blinks or is distracted.

The most advanced technologies get smarter the longer they study a scene. This is exactly what analytics do best.

Interested in learning more? A more in-depth version of this story can be found at http://www.videoiq.net/products/resources

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Latest Trend of Uploading Videos Online

With the induction of posting video files in the internet it has become extremely exciting for people who can now upload and share videos with others and even see the person to whom one is talking. This facility has thus invoked in a sentiment in people who believe it to be one of the best methods to communicate.

The user-friendly features of the technology make it extremely simple for people to upload videos clips and files with ease. The online video sharing has thus become a very common activity with users of this technology. People feel great about the benevolence offered by this technology. This advanced internet based facility allows people to upload video, share photos and transfer files to others with ease.

The user-friendliness of the system makes uploading of videos further simple. Now, the user just has to browse for the video clip stored in the PC and then upload it with the help of the link provided by the website. Once it is done, the end users can easily view the uploaded video on their own computer screen. So, the technological aspect is definitely advanced and solves a number of problems relating to communication and seamless connectivity options.

Information about the websites providing such options so as to upload video clips and video files is available in the internet. People can simply search for such sites and use them for communicating with others. There are a number of such websites that offer telephony options with the simultaneous provisions of sharing of files, videos and photos. Not only this, data transfer in the form of messages is also possible with such websites.

The number of websites which now provide video uploading facility, has grown quite rapidly. This event has taken place simultaneously with the event of an increase in the number of users who are using the feature of video uploading. So, definitely there remains immense scope for users of the service to fulfill their dreams relating to their business as well as personal lives. It definitely boosts the confidence of people who are users of video uploading services.

This service, however, continues to draw the attention of people for being a great means to upload videos and share photos. This has irrevocably brought a tremendous difference in the way people share the precious moments of their life with their loved ones.

Forensic Video Analysis: Helping to Prevent Crime Near You

Although it is a sad fact of life, crime is everywhere around us.  Whether it is robbery, breaking and entering or murder, it is something we must face in our society.  With technology continuously advancing, more and more sensitive organizations like the F.B.I and U.S. Army crime lab are becoming reliant on forensic video analysis.

There are many different kinds of video forensic software to choose from to help prevent future crimes.  As technology continues to develop, so too do the options these special organizations have to work with.  Software is reaching new levels of clarity, detail, and accessibility.

Video has always had an impact on stopping crime and convicting criminals.  But what used to be poor quality is now turning into crystal clear images.  Now poor-quality videos can be enhanced to provide extremely valuable data through powerful forensic video analysis and enhancement. 

Video has been around for quite some time now and while it has been beneficial, it just has not been quite enough.  But with the new software and capabilities available, video has become a whole new weapon against crime.  Whether it is used for law enforcement, surveillance, security, or military operations, it is now compatible with a wide variety of options.

When looking at the different features all software has to offer, there are a few things you will want to identify.  With the advancement in technology, you want to look for innovative features for data capture, analysis, enhancement, and editing.  You should be able to do just about anything you want with the video that has been captured.

Forensic video analysis today gives you the opportunity to play around with demultiplexing, frame averaging, color tracking, audio noise filtering and much more.  And to take it a step further, video capabilities have improved to make image stabilization, magnification, rotating and repositioning that much easier.

You would think that technology this advanced would run you an arm and a leg.  But as more products are developed, it is becoming increasingly cost-effective.  There are several different kinds of software to choose from to help you manipulate and work with the video however you wish to. 

In addition, most software is extremely user-friendly.  You do not have to be a computer expert or a genius with technology.  You can play around with the various features to do whatever you want with the video easily.  And this is just the beginning to how forensic video analysis is helping prevent crime near you.

Now I, Fredrik Lönn, offer you to download Fast video indexer from FastVideoIndexer and try it for feel. Use the program to turn videos into photos that you can analyze with your standard photo software.

Yes, Video Marketing Success Can be Yours!

Is your company stuck in a sales rut? If this is the case, then you probably have not been aware of the great benefits of video marketing. Video marketing is all the rage nowadays, what with people being able to hone their skills and their talents in this arena and come up with really awesome results. Video marketing has, in fact, gone a very long way.

In the past, video marketing was mostly remembered as those corny messages constructed by companies that annoyingly stuck in the minds of everyone. Hardly pleasant, of course. Nowadays, however, the opposite of that can actually be said. More businesses are pursuing video marketing as an effective marketing tool. This is also because they are now easily open to a wide range of technology.

This allows them to come up with video marketing solutions to send out any type of business message. This is the first standard which they adhere to when it comes to business, cost effectiveness and professionalism. Video marketing has always been constant with change. Because of the rapidly developing technology video marketing has been able to produce the desired effects in half the time.

In fact, any person who is part of a small company (or even an independent individual as well) can work with video marketing even with a very tight budget. This also means producing video marketing efforts with a high quality sound and high quality picture. This simply means that many production companies are now offering more cost effective services to help you satisfy your video marketing needs.

This also translates into video marketing being very flexible in nature and that any company can come up with their own video marketing as well. It also comes in a great many format but the current popular format for video marketing would be online video. This can be easily watched on a computer. Nowadays, many companies are investing in video marketing that can fit the format of one’s iPod and one’s mobile phone. It is like having company’s video with them everywhere they go. This is the best kind of marketing tool that you can ever come up with.

It is then no surprise that those who work in this kind of industry need to update themselves about the trends of the times. It is the only way they can beat the competition and show others that they are the best. And of course, being “the best” is practically synonymous to being the first to do it. In these technological times, the best video efforts are the ones that are usually pioneers who are hardest to match.

For your company, you will need to ensure that you exercise all means to make sure your corporate video is in the hands of as many people as you can. Utilize everything from computers, television, radio, print media and other mobile technological tools. This way, you can beat out the rest in terms of visibility. Pretty soon, your company will be number one when it comes to marketing efforts.

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