[OT] Streaming Video

Andrew Kelly akelly at transparency.org
Tue Apr 19 09:23:44 UTC 2005


Hi Rick,

Don't know if you got my earlier response to this mail, I haven't heard
back from you.

On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 19:20, Rick Stevens wrote:
> Andrew Kelly wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > anybody out there have any experience with serving streaming video?
> > Help? Pointers? Links to good reading?
> 
> You'll have to be a bit more specific.  There are at least four popular
> formats:  QuickTime, Real, Windows Media and Macromedia FLASH.  What
> are you trying to do.
> 
> My company is one of the largest streaming companies on the Internet
> (http://www.vitalstream.com) and I have LOTS of experience in this
> arena, but I need to know what you are trying to accomplish.

It's been a bit of a challenge to get "my people" to tell me what 
exactly it is that they want to accomplish. As it so often turns out, 
they don't yet rightly know and are being a bit premature with everything.

What I know:
Our PR folk have a CD with a 26 minute video (mpg, 600+ Mb) documentary that
they would like to make available from our web site. To this end they have 
had it compressed, and it comes to me in two flavors: .wmv and .mp4, both 
of which land around 35 Mb.

Initially it will only be about this one bit, but I would assume that within
a few months there will be an additional clip or two joining it. I'm certain there 
will be no talk of live broadcasts or anything of that nature for 
at least 2 years, but I'm pretty confident that once the ice is broken,
they'll want to begin to take advantage of the medium.

So, the nutshell is this:
My employer is a non-profit NGO on a painfully limited budget. They need 
the biggest bang for their buck in everything they do. The goal is the 
most cost-effective way to begin to make video material available to
the widest possible public (the site has a very strong 3rd world interest).
Whether that be an open source solution on one of my hosts, or contracting
to a third party interest like your organization or anything in between, is 
virtually unimportant at this point. The goal is biggest bang. :-)

Hey, perhaps you'd like to broker a service donation to the "leading global 
non-governmental organisation devoted to combating corruption"!

I'd really appreciate any direction or help you could offer, Rick, and thank 
you greatly in advance.


(Oh, I've also just notice that your company is looking to fill a few 
positions.... What's the cost of living down there?)


Andy

-- 
Andrew Kelly
Online Products Developer
Transparency International e.V.
Alt Moabit 96 
10559 Berlin, Germany 
Tel:    +4930 3530 5701
Fax:    +4930 3530 5702
mailto:devel at corisweb.org

http://www.transparency.org
http://www.corisweb.org






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