How to Create Streaming Media
Summary
Creating streaming media is a multi-step process. It often involves shooting, capturing, editing, and encoding source material, either audio, video, or both, with all kinds of decision-making along the way. This overview can help you to understand the creation process. If you need help doing the work, refer to the streaming media support reference.
Included on this page:
Project Planning
Streaming media projects of all sizes benefit from planning early on. To increase your project's chances of success, try to answer these kinds of questions while planning:
- What are your goals, who defines them, and how will you know if you've met them?
- Who is your target audience, what kind of computers do they use, and how do they connect them to the Internet?
- What are the limiting factors to delivering streaming media to your target audience? (e.g., computer access, connection speed, CPU speed, server disk space)
- What copyright restrictions apply to your source material?
- What other legal obligations must be met? (e.g. access to people with disabilities)
- What uses might your content have in the future?
Along with a project plan, you also may want to develop a storyboard and script. It is wise to consider, particularly with the bandwidth requirements of streamed video, that your audience most likely will experience the end result in a small window on a computer screen.
Shooting & Recording
Streaming media creation can be described as a battle against unnecessary detail in your source content. The more detail, the less it can be compressed, the harder it is to stream to a wide audience. Follow these tips to produce high quality audio and video while minimizing extraneous detail:
Audio production tips
- Reduce outside noise
- Use professional equipment
- Record digitally (e.g. DAT, Minidisc; 44.1kHz, 16 bit, stereo)
Video production tips
- Minimize camera motion
- Minimize subject motion
- Use a tripod
- Use a lot of light
- Use a simple background
- Avoid camera pans and zooms
- Use professional equipment
- Use a digital format (e.g. DV)
Capturing/Digitizing
After producing your audio and/or video, capture it from your master tape into a computer. If the tape is not in a digital format, your capture card will digitize analog input. Follow these tips to capture material without losing quality:
- Use DV format and FireWire connection
- Use a fast computer
- Use a high capture data rate
- Use high quality capture cards
- Capture video at high resolution
- Capture video at full frame rate
Editing/Optimizing
After capturing your source material, edit it as needed, adding titles and effects as needed. Afterwards, you can, and probably should, optimize your source content. Specific optimization techniques are beyond the technical scope of this overview; however, here are some tips professionals use to create high quality source content for encoding and streaming:
Audio optimization tips
- Remove DC offset (low frequencies & noise)
- Normalization
- Dynamic compression
- Equalization
Video optimization tips
- Crop the fuzzy edges
- Reduce video noise (with filters)
- Adjust contrast
- Adjust gamma level (for cross-platform viewing)
- Black and white restore
- Deinterlace
- Remove 3:2 pulldown (inverse telecine)
Archiving
What if your project goals change, or your target audience shifts in some significant way? What if changes in information technology allow you to stream to new audiences or existing audiences in new ways? What if this all happens next month? If it does, you may have to encode new versions of your source content. Therefore, after editing and optimizing, export and archive a high-quality master copy of your source content for future repurposing. In doing so, follow these general tips:
- Export audio at full bit depth and data rate
- Export video at full bit depth, resolution, and frame rate
- Do not compress your master copy (DV is okay)
- Archive on tape, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM
- Archive in multiple ways to ensure disaster recovery
With all the work you've done so far, you don't want to lose the master copy of your source content!
Encoding/Compressing
In order to deliver your source content, you must compress it so that it can be successfully streamed (or downloaded) by your target audience. Encoding is the process by which this compression happens, and it is full of tough, over-lapping decisions. Some of these decisions include:
- Streaming media format (QuickTime vs. RealSystem vs. Windows Media)
- Supported playback platforms (Microsoft Windows vs. Macintosh)
- Delivery method (true real-time streaming vs HTTP streaming)
- Overall data rate (compression vs. quality vs. bandwidth required)
- Data rate distribution (audio vs. video)
- Video quality (smooth motion vs. image quality vs. image size)
- Audio quality (mono vs. stereo)
To meet your goals, you may end up encoding multiple versions, in different formats and data rates.
Delivering
Once you've encoded your source content, the process of creating streaming media is complete. Now you have to deliver it to your target audience. To do so, upload your encoded content to a server, test it using the configurations of your target audience, and, if satisfied, incorporate it into your Web site.
