I'm an Internet user with about 30 years of experience in designing electronic systems. Since about 20 years I work in video and
broadcast environment, which in the last 10 years, look with high interest to Internet and web diffusion.
It is not only Internet important for broadcast: also multimedia is more and more important for Internet.
I've used the collection of five video produced by the "the story if stuff project"
whehe you can find the entire production in english. On the web are available the translations in many languages: It is sufficient to look for them.
The original movies are available on Youtube (Story of Stuff channel):
the story of stuff (first original movie)
the story of bottled water
the story of consumer electronics
the story of cosmetics
the story of cap & trade
The story of citizens united against Federal Election Commission (FEC)
The story of break (the USA 2011 default)
The story of change (the latest)
Today if a website do not contains something moving is useless: even the website of banks include video segments showing only happy customers, and - excluding magic skips - make longer the loading times...
Despite I'm not a software guy (I think that anyone must do at the best his own work), I decided to do some streaming experiments, because I think (together some hundred million people) streaming will be the future of broadcasting: how can I ask something if I've neither the idea about that think can be done?
I've done
the first tests on Tiscali webspace (my former network provider) thanks to my studio's public IP address.
They were minimal test, centered on viewing and video browser compatibility, and the first streaming test.
I recall again that I'm not a programmer. For me Java is mainly a big Indonesian island, so these pages are written
exclusively in basic html with a textual editor.
And there is a difference: if you had never noticed, the file hallo world written with Microsoft Word ,
is at least 4,4 KB, while written in plain html with a textual editor like Notepad it is 138 byte, about 1/30, the 3%.
Yes, it is true, today space is metered in Gigabyte, and 4K are available for all, but any byte is important if you have only 10 MB of web space (like the Tiscali free webspace).
The streaming test I can carry out from my studio are poor, no more than concept demonstrators, because my ADSL connection has about 8 Mbps in download and about 500 Kbps in upload From my studio I can stream one CIF video pre-compressed in h264 (mean about 250 Kbps, the 500 Kbps are "best effort"). I must also say that stream is generated by an old Pentium 3 400 MHz that cannot do more.
My target was to demostrate me that anyone can broadcast a live video stream segnale on the web to the entire world with affordable budget, and I think to have got it.
To stream I choose to use VLC, after for its open source, because it allow to stream something alike broadcast: only one stream is generated,
and are unique for any clients only the repeated packets and the related handshaking.
But my studio - as all the houses in Italy - can suffer of short black-out, I have no continuity supply, the old Pentium III could go suddenly down, and also my ADLS connection could be down. So it can happen the stream is unavailable, and Igino Manfre' Broadcasting do not plan any panels such as sorry for broadcast interruption
There is a lot of speaking about cloud: instead of purchasing a server, get a connection with a solid broadband upload (impossible to normal beings), it is better to cosider the services of these shared server farm, allowing to anyone to rent computational power from virtual machines. Enabling even me to perform experiments like these I'm doing: my 4 GB RAM xeon core, Windows 2008-R2 server on 40 GB disc is connected to the rest of the world at 1 Gbps, about 2000 time more faster than my studio. At 38 euro/month. Everything is virtual? What does changed to me?
With remote desktop I can reach from any networked pc (even from windows home versions where mstsc.exe is in but must be found in c:\windows\system32), and it is like I would be there. It is always on and, being part of a big and high performance service farm, do not suffer of power problems.
Yes, ok, I can imagine how many people can reach my free tiscali webspace (in any case flattened by the Telco Operator by his own initiative) or my wordpress account, or may be interested to the loop broadcast of "the story of stuff" overvoiced in italian in any case available in VOD on youtube? Not a lot, but the bandwidth is important: the greater part of domestic connections supply fraction of Mbps of uplink. Nevertheless, I agree, the Gigabit offered me by Aruba is nominal, and all depends on the network load of the physical server that host my virtual machine, but I think that it can be enhanced and negotiated on renting (If I ever need something better).
Yes, to transfer 500 MB can require half a day, but it is occasional, and if it would become more frequent, it means I probably should upgrade the performance of my Internet connection.
All started with a 25 euro credit Aruba yeld to who want to test their cloud: appetite comes with eating.
Igino Manfre'
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Post Scriptum:A ghost wanders the web, the ghost of media rights, fiercely defended by who make business of it, but widely ignored
- I think with a plenty of reason - by the greater part of Internet people, that put contents on YouTube (or similar) scattered through the world with not a lot of problems.
What do you do if you want to listen a song or seen a scene? Type down the title of the song on google (for movie it is slighter more complex), and quite sure
you'll find it, a double click and you'll listen it: probably it will lack of quality, but you must be happy of what can get (and today's boys can able to be happy of what they get, you can be shure!)
The reason I'm always using the video from "the story of stuff project" overvoiced in italian by the magic Alice of Palermo, is why - after fully agree their message - they are royalty free, without any right (excluding mention the source in order to not stole the intellectual property
It is the same approach of open source software and of copyleft, the reverse of copyright.
More than question about how these organizations can survive without right from their creations (terrible are those case of rights lasting even hundred years after the exit of a musical track), please notice copyright and related commerce is part of the current development model in crysis, and soon or after ineluctably will change.
From our side try to support hanyhow the no-profit research and knowledge sharing organizations: it is not correct to do money exploiting free the work of others... (but this could be a meaningful phrase...)