Media server

Media server

Introduction to Continuous Media Server:

Media server:

You can use Media Server to enhance static textual and graphical documents with real-time audio, delivered instantly live and on demand to work within existing computer and network infrastructures.

Unicasting and multicasting clips and live feed:

Media Server lets users play back live audio feeds using Internet Protocol multicast or on-demand access to pre-recorded audio clips. Media Server can unicast or multicast both stored audio clips and live feeds. Unicast is a type of broadcast that delivers packets to a single destination, whereas multicast delivers packets to only a subset of all possible destinations.

Businesses can take advantage of these features to deploy audio-enabled network applications such as:
• Multimedia training applications for employees on an intranet and outside partners on the Internet.
• Internal and external publications whose visibility and effectiveness are enhanced by audio content.
• Broadcast audio briefings over the network to communicate with internal and external partners.
Multicasting is not limited to data captured live from an audio device; you can also loop a stored audio file and serve it as a live feed, a method that can help alleviate network traffic problems on high demand sites.

A theater site could, for example, record a listing of all currently playing movies, along with show times, special offers, and ticket prices and then multicast and loop the file. A customer who tunes in mid-multicast could simply stay tuned until the file starts playing again.

Serving synchronized multimedia presentations:

You can employ Media Server to synchronize audio with HTML documents, Java applets, and JavaScript applications using LiveConnect. The result is a dynamic user experience that integrates text, graphics, and audio to facilitate more effective communication.

A business site could, for example, provide a multimedia presentation of its benefits policies that includes videos with synchronized audio narration. Another alternative would be a motion picture site presenting synchronized audio and video clips from a new movie.

Protocol Using LiveMedia Streaming:

Media Server supports the LiveMedia Streaming Protocol (LMSP). LMSP is a protocol used for on-demand access of multimedia objects such as stored real-time audio files and live real-time feeds.

LMSP is a hybrid protocol that:
• Uses Session Control Protocol (SCP) over TCP for control messages and non-real-time data
• Optionally uses Real-Time Transfer Protocol (RTP) over User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for real-time data delivery
Connection settings exist that allow you to choose a UDP connection, or request TCP transport or RTP framing.

Creating high-quality audio at low bandwidth:

High-quality digital audio is bandwidth intensive. Short, monaural speeches require megabytes of data, and CD-quality stereo music requires even more. To transmit this information efficiently over a network without loss of quality, you need sophisticated audio compression and decompression modules (codecs). More importantly, to create the best possible listening experience, audio delivery must be optimized for the available network bandwidth.

Multiple codec support:

By supporting muliple codecs, Media Server provides the following benefits:
• It encodes audio content at multiple compression ratios to ensure high-quality delivery using available network bandwidth.
• It produces high-quality speech at less than 4.8 Kbps.
• It produces broadcast-quality stereo audio at less than 28.8 Kbps modem speeds.
• It produces CD-quality stereo audio at Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and LAN speeds.
• It allows additional codecs to be utilized by the server.

Creating your audio files:

Media Server supports .av files on Unix, .wav files, and LiveAudio (.la) files, in which you can store compressed (constant or variable bit-rate) audio. You can create LiveAudio files using Media Converter included with Media Server. You can also use the Media Converter to compress .wav files.

Recording audio files:

You can use any recording device appropriate for creating audio files to record audio files to serve with Media Server. When recording your files, you can use Media Converter to optimize the recording format for a specific codec.
You can include Media Player controls for Play/Pause, Stop, and Volume. You can also include a position slider for seeking within an audio file, and an Options button that displays a drop-down menu from which a user can display a Properties dialog box for information about the current clip.

The Media Player controls appear in a rectangular space, which can be a frame separate from your page's other content. You could, for example include a header frame, a main frame with text, images, or video, and a plug-in frame containing Media Player controls. You can also embed multiple sets of controls in a single HTML page so that clients can play multiple audio files.


On a Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or Windows NT system, Media Player functions as an MCI driver that you can also configure through a control panel on your systems.


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