Streaming Solutions

[Wbtz]

Hi, I would like to find out the ways that are used to speed up streaming of videos. What are the common strategies used? Is there a comparison table anyway? Thanks!!

[benedict]

Not sure about what exactly you are refering to with this. In general, the speed is going to be limited by the slowest end of the connection. If the server is slower than you are (or merely lacks the bandwidth to handle the current requests for download), it's a done deal. If your connection is slower than the server, it is similarly a done deal. The weakest link in the chain rules.

If you are faster than the server, the only possibility is to look to another D/L site to speed things up.

[Wbtz]

Actually what i meant was if bandwidth was not taken into consideration, or perhaps on the client side, it is high bandwidth. How can streaming be speeded up? For example perhaps stream from multiple servers? Wonder if there are methods along this line?

[benedict]

Multiple servers? That would be a cute trick. Haven't heard of anything like that for video, but certainly if it's possible for program downloads, someone could possibly come up with it.

You might want to check out the SourceForge site. They've got thousands of open source type projects going on over there and many are quite progressive. Check through their listings. Maybe someone over there is working on that.

[benedict]

You are probably right in regard to multiple servers enhancing "view while downloading". Perhaps a genius someday might figure that one out.

But to merely download without viewing during download? Why not? We do that with program downloads all the time. Of course, we are not executing those programs as we download them either!

But a file is a file and a download is a download. No reason why the same multiple server deal couldn't work with video. The only problem one might face is finding multiple servers with the exact same compression of the video file.

[Wbtz]

Thats why I would like to find out if such a technology exist. Is there a true mpeg4 encoder that actually encodes the a video into the elemetary stream? XviD doesnt do that, it compresses video only. Thats why I am looking for one codec that encodes a video into the elementary streams and then multiplexes them. In this case it can be actually be streamed from various servers!