Streaming media

Streaming media is a term that describes "just in time" delivery of multimedia information. It's typically applied to compressed multimedia formats delivered over the Internet.

There are many pieces to a streaming media system. Encoding tools for compressing the media into a format suitable for delivery over the Internet. Servers to make the compressed files and live streams available to many people. Players to actually connect to the servers and get the media.

Additionally, there's a lot of technology under the hood. Codecs which are the compression/decompression routines used by encoding tools and players. File formats are shared by encoding tools and servers to generically store encoded streams. Players and servers need shared protocols for streaming the data.

• Streaming media systems:
  • [Apple's Quicktime].
  • [AOL's Shoutcast]
  • [Icecast]
  • [Microsoft's Windows Media]
  • MPEG-4
  • [RealNetworks' RealSystem]
• Codecs (see codec page)
• Protocols:
  • HTTP
  • RTSP
  • RTP
• File formats
  • Quicktime?
  • AVI?
• Description Formats
  • SDP - Session Description Protocol
  • SMIL - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
• Community streaming sites:
  • [Ubergid.com: Website for discussion on encoding, serving and business models]