Streaming Media Services

On This Page
Introduction
Activating Streaming Account
Uploading Video
Sharing your Video
Miscellaneous
Help

Introduction to Streaming Media

UW Information Technology provides streaming media services for all UW staff, faculty, courses, and departments. Streaming media allows you to embed videos, music, and other media types directly into a website or allow viewers to watch the media on a client such as Windows Media Player, VLC, or Quicktime without having to download the entire file first. Users can "stream" the media, which is a technology that allows media to be viewed while it is still loading in the background. Streaming videos make content easily accessible to a wide array of audiences.

This documentation is intended to be an introduction to streaming media at the UW and will provide you with the basic tools needed to create, upload, and embed streaming media on UW-IT maintained streaming servers. Familiarity with web publishing at the UW and media creation is assumed.

An example of streaming media can be found below:

Streaming Media Example

Note: Copyright laws and UW policies apply to your use of the streaming media service. You must respect copyrights.

Activating Your Streaming Account

Before you can upload and create streaming content, you first need to activate your streaming media service. To do this, please follow these directions:

StepsActions
Navigate to your Manage NetID page.
Click on "Computing Services."
Select the checkbox next to "Streaming Media" and then click on "Subscribe"
That's it! Congratulations, your streaming media service is now activated. A new folder called public_media should now be in your home directory on homer.

Your streaming media directory functions as a special folder for streaming media files. The activation process creates a shortcut called public_media on your Homer account to make it easier for you to put files in your streaming media directory.

URLs to Access your Streaming Media

Uploading your Video

At some point, you will need to transfer your file to your public_media folder located on homer.u.washington.edu. The following page explains how to do this:
Publishing to your public_media folder using sFTP

You can also mount your public_media folder right on your computer's desktop using the CIFS protocol.
Publishing to your public_media folder using CIFS

Note: Depending on your video sharing option, you may need to re-encode your video. If this is the case, you may need to either re-upload the video again, or wait until converting before starting the upload process.

You need to make a decision on how you want your viewers to view your media. There are four primary choices. Take a minute to review them and find a solution that works best for your needs. You can use as many as you'd like.

View using a Flash-based Player in a Browser (Recommended): This is the format that is most widely recognized and supported by internet users today. Virtually every streaming site (including YouTube), uses a Flash-based media player to stream content to the viewer. Most "Flash" videos are H.264-encoded files that are then viewed using a Flash-based player.

You can find instructions on the following site that will walk you through how to do this:
Encoding, Uploading, and Publishing Streaming Media
View in a Desktop Media Player: This is the simplest option, and is where you upload your video file either as-is or converted into a format that you know works with the program you want to target. An example is a .wmv file: this will work fine in Windows Media Player, but users who try other clients or other operating systems may not be able to view your video without installing additional programs.

To allow a user view these files, you will want to upload the video to your public_media folder from homer. Then you will provide them with a link to the file in the format of http://stream.uw.edu/netid/filename.wmv. They will copy or type that into their media player, and it should start streaming.
Use HTML5 and Display in Browser without Flash: By using HTML5 and browser-based video, you can create content that users with modern browsers can view. However, this technology is by no means mature, and only works in a handful of browsers at this point.

We don't recommend taking this approach at this time, but the following website offers an excellent primer and tutorial on how to create, encode, and publish video using HTML5 if you'd like to test it out:

Dive Into HTML5: Video on the Web (External Link)
Local-based viewer that is embedded in a browser: This was the means that we had previously recommended in embedding streaming media. It uses a object or plugin that directly interfaces with a locally-installed media player. Compatibility is mixed for this format, and functions much like the "Desktop Media Player" option.

Miscellaneous

Streaming Media URL References
The URLs associated with content in your streaming media directory.

How to Fix File and Directory Permissions
Learn the right Unix commands to use to fix the permissions of your streaming media directory and the files within it.

Streaming Media Support References
UW resources that provide some support for streaming media projects.

Getting Help

Send an email to help@uw.edu with any questions.