Streaming's Switzerland?
Companies offer neutral file zone in streaming media wars
By Karen Brown
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
In the battling, faction-riddled streaming media market, they propose to bring a master order--a sort of no-fight zone for those weary of the rich media wars.
Master file streaming media players fielded by at least two companies promise content providers a way to trash multiple versions of the same streaming media clips without dumping their audience at the same time. For users, they can cut the hassle of downloading a gaggle of players to view content on the Internet.
Startup Generic Media is one such company. It comes out of the gate with a service that converts clients' rich media into one master video or audio file that can be played at a range of bit rates using a number of streaming media players.
Peter Hoddie, the company's CEO, says cutting out the version confusion will go a long way to growing more streaming media content on the Web. Users click on the master file and it automatically downloads to whatever player they are using, so they don't have to download multiple players. "The end user really shouldn't have to suffer from the wars between these guys," he says. "The content should be out there and reachable."
Clients send their video or audio to Generic Media's central service, which produces the master file. Then the file then can be accessed through the client's Web site via a link.
That eliminates the expense and hassle of encoding content for multiple players and bit rates--and trying to keep pace with media player upgrades that come out every several months several months. Hoddie says it is not unusual now for a content provider to offer up to nine versions of the same video clip.
"With our system they really just have to create the content once and then they can forget about it," he says. "When upgrades to the server come out, when new codecs come out, we just automatically adapt to that."
Cost is a big selling point. It costs an estimated $7 per minute, per format, per bit rate to encode a video stream. Generic Media's service costs about $400 per hour to prepare video for online distribution. By comparison, encoding video for the three most popular players--offered by Real Networks, Microsoft and Apple Computer--at three bit rates is closer to $4,000 per hour.
"So the startup costs are literally on an order of a magnitude less than using the traditional approach," he says. "And of course, there is never a need to revisit it to re-encode it again down the line because our service takes care of that automatically."
With no human producer needed, the system can turn around media files as quickly as it receives them, making it a good fit for time-sensitive content such as news.
"As soon as something is posted--as soon as it is made available to us, it's available in every format and at every data rate," Hoddie says. "It's basically zero-time encoding, which is kind of a nifty thing the industry hasn't seen before."
Generic Media already has struck deals to provide its universal media file technology to big brands including Sony Corp. and Canon DV, the company's digital camera division. Generic also has a deal with one Japanese newspaper to field news streams for its online product; a pact with the ZBS Foundation arts organization to encode its audio content; and a deal with distance learning company R/com Networks, Inc to convert its QuickTime-based archives for use with other players and at lower data rates.
Another player offering a universal source file for rich media is Telestream Inc., whose FlipFactory software automatically creates universal streaming media files. In contrast to Generic Media, FlipFactory uses the content provider's own server system.
David Heppe, Telestream's vice president of marketing and business development, calls this strategy attractive for high-volume media producers. "If you are a high-volume user, it sure is nice to bite the bullet up front and pay for the capital if you know you are going to be in the business for a long time," Heppe says. "Your costs over time are much less than they would be with a service like that."
As with Generic Media, Heppe says FlipFactory also offers cost savings to streaming media producers. He puts the cost to send media to an outsource encoding shop at about $10 per minute per format. By comparison, FlipFactory carries an up front cost of about $30,000, and with virtually no add-on costs the second year.
FlipFactory's flagship client is Pathfire, a service provider that provides converted news footage to all of NBC's affiliate Web sites. Other clients include cable's CNN, Bloomberg TV and TechTV. Heppe notes TechTV is using the software to convert all of its television video for use at its sister Web site.
"What used to take them four people and lots of PCs and several hours to get their programming up on their Web site, they now use our product and one person and it gets there faster and more reliably and more consistent across the different players," he says.
FlipFactory also benefits from automation in the processing time, converting clips at real-time or faster. Telestream also offers software updates to keep pace with streaming media trends, but it gives customers the option to demo and then decide whether to buy.
"There are a lot of hurdles to getting video over broadband, and probably the biggest one is the last mile, so that everybody has a big enough pipe to see decent video," Heppe says. "But we think making the creation and selection format agnostic, that really helps lower one of the hurdles to making streaming media that much more popular."
Such master file offerings help make streaming media more universally accessible, but companies that do so don't face an easy sale in the besieged content market, warns Paul Palumbo, interactive broadcast video analyst for DFC Intelligence.
"It does solve a problem, making more media available to more people for less cost," he says. "But on the flip side, it requires a lot of marketing and a sales force. And it's not easy to sell anything these days--even if it does solve a problem."
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