Streaming media is one-way transmission of audio or video over a data network. Encoders convert data to a format suitable for streaming. Cost and functionality vary, with professional encoders offering more output format choices and additional features such as pre-processing and captioning. Live webcasts require an encoder that can also stream.
Media streaming is a one-way transmission of audio or video material over a data network. It can be used to stream media from websites to site visitors’ computers without data being stored on the computer from a computer or dedicated drive on a home network to a media hub for display on a home theater setup. An encoder is a device or software used to convert data from one particular format or signal to another. A streaming media encoder is a hardware device or software application that prepares a file for streaming, often by taking a large, high-quality digital file and compressing it to make it compact and efficient for streaming.
Streaming media encoders vary greatly in scope and cost. Windows® Media Encoder software is free, while a professional streaming media encoder can be five digits long. As is to be expected with such a wide cost range, functionality also varies quite a bit.
One area of difference is in the output file choices. The Windows® Media Encoder will produce audio files with the .wma (Windows Media Audio) extension and video files with the .wmv (Windows Media Video) extension. With a professional streaming media encoder, the choices will be much wider, including types of output formats such as Windows® Media, RealVideo®, AVI (Audio Video Interleave) and Adobe® Flash®; video format choices such as H.263 or H.264 or MPEG-4 (Moving Pictures Experts Group); and audio format choices such as AAC and MP3.
Another difference is more subtle. While Windows® Media Encoder and the professional models all offer the option to send the file to a media server for streaming or provide a provision to allow the file to be pulled from the streaming media encoder itself, experts recommend using Windows® Media Encodering this way would give poor results, given the bandwidth this would require. Streaming media can be live or on-demand, and can also be unicast or multicast. As far as streaming media encoder is concerned, live webcast is where an encoder that can also stream is desirable.
Professional streaming media encoder hardware may have some additional features. These can include a wider range of pre-processing capabilities, including deinterlacing, cropping, scaling, sampling, and HW gain and attenuation. Captioning and extraction capabilities can also be provided.
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