People like watching video over the Internet, and that preference is driving videos beyond social media sites like YouTube into the professional realm.
By Leslie O'Neill
April 18, 2012
Streaming video is most commonly used as either an Internet broadcast channel, serving up recorded videos on demand, or as a real-time one-way or two-way communications tool for conferencing. It can be used for entertainment or education as well as for surveillance or collaboration. It can be opened up to the public at large or used within a private network. However, none of this can be done until the video is actually online and to do that it takes a streaming media encoder.
Sitting squarely in the intersection where A/V meets IT, streaming media encoders are network devices that reside between your switch or router and your firewall. They translate your video into IP packets that can travel across the local IP network and across the Internet. Streaming media encoders built for A/V also scale the video for a specific output resolution, either low or high, which can be viewed on a variety of screens and across different bandwidths. For instance, you might want your on-demand video to be viewed easily by people using smartphones on a 3G network. However, you might also want the CEO’s quarterly message to stakeholders be broadcast in HD on a room-sized display.
No matter what kind of video you plan to stream, the streaming media encoder should share common features with other devices on your IP network.
“Reliability of service, ease of use and flexibility in configuration are top considerations. It’s just not important how good the stream
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