Two Kind of Online Video Streaming and What it Means for You

Let’s get technical!

No doubt you’re familiar with HTTP, the familiar hypertext transfer protocol that zips info to-and-fro on the web. You know, those pesky letters you have to type in before the WWW for a web address.

HTTP was designed for standard web pages made of text, graphics and images. Now keep in mind that as digital files swoop along, they sometimes run into broken links and clogged areas, so info gets re-routed, just like you do in morning rush hour when there’s a bridge out.

Detours are a lot more difficult for complex video files of information than simple text files, which is another factor affecting transmission time and quality. Enter RTSP, or Real Time Streaming Protocol.

RTSP tackles streaming video content much like HTTP handles standard data transfer. RTSP was designed specifically for video transmission, so it’s newer and works quite differently.

Both methods are used for video transmission; HTTP is so pervasive that you can’t get away from it. This is not something to sweat over; both methods have their advantages, pros and cons. Use whatever is available to you from your video host.

Since all information is useful, it’s good for an Internet video producer to know the difference. On a technical level, RTSP provides a cleaner, smoother file transfer for video than HTTP. To accomplish this, RTSP requires specialized streaming video servers, which are expensive and were certainly not common in the earlier days of internet video streaming.

These specialized servers control the streaming process and adjust the data rate speed based on the ebb and flow of internet traffic. This is good and bad. If the Internet is packed, clogged and jammed, transmission can be poor. This could become increasingly frustrating for the viewer, especially since every minute Americans generate 3,138,420 GB in internet traffic, which is a lot of people trying to use the internet at the same time.

Obviously, internet access has become a lot more accessible to people all over the world. The Internet is becoming a lot faster, and it is able to do a lot more than it could before.  We can clearly see how far the internet has come in recent times, which is why so many people seem to access it at the same time. If that is slowing your internet down, it might be time to consider looking for some other broadband only deals with faster internet speeds.

When you stream video through HTTP, it is called progressive downloading. The viewer has to wait for the video to download completely before he can see the end. No skipping around! This method is cheaper and easier, since no special servers are needed, but some viewers like the ability to skip around.

When you stream via RTSP, it’s also called progressive streaming or true streaming. The viewer’s experience varies widely with based on connection speed and how clogged the net is at the moment. RTSP works best when traffic is low. Look into video stream monitoring if you’d like to monitor the performance of your network while streaming data.

Real streaming video is more expensive and generally used by bigger producers.

No matter which type of streaming your viewer will ultimately use to watch your video, it’s important to keep your file size as small as possible. This means you need to convert it well, so resolution stays high, but file size is less than 10 MB per finished minute of video.

For clean Internet video transmission, small compressed files are the name of the game.

I personally used the free conversion software Handbrake and convert to MPEG4.

I hope this information helps you better use online video.

Lorraine Grula