Several NSV related questions

[BullWeivel]

I have several questions.

Currently have a server up and running. It is streaming video that I captured from one of my classes in college. I have several questions though:

1. How can I make it so that a person can stream on demand a certain video? Will this work if I have 5 people online and all 5 of them streaming a different video???

2. If the person is streaming a on-demand video, can they fast forward/rewind and etc?

3. Do the active-x controls have the ability to fast forward/rewind an on-demand video??

3. What can I use to edit a NSV file? Specificaly I would like to be able to edit the video and audio so I can place clips in between one another. Sometimes I run into a full tape and need to insert another tape into the clip.

4. I hear VP6 is the best codec to use for streaming, and for quality of picture. The problem that I am running into is that I am recording one of my classes. The camera is showing everytihng just fine, but replay after encoding it I run into a some what fuzzy picture which at times can be hard to read. I figure each stream will be 300K, so with 300K how can I fix the streams picture so you can read what is being written on the board?? On the camera you can totaly see the board and read everything just fine. I have been using VP3 because VP6 just looks horid compared to VP3...so that makes no sense because I have read in more then one spot that everything works much better on VP3.

5. It would be nice to put a subtitle on the screen at the bottom of the video with information such as the date, and subject of the class. But the capture program does not always place this information into the file when capturing it from the video camera. How can I fix this when this blunder happens. Would much rather edit the file then have to play the entire 1 1/2 hour tapes and hope that the capture program didnt mess up.

Thanks in advance!
Tom

[ken52787]

1. How can I make it so that a person can stream on demand a certain video? Will this work if I have 5 people online and all 5 of them streaming a different video???
Just upload the nsv files to a web server and link to them. They will then be able to be watched whenever someone wants, and yes, you can have multiple people watching different vids.

2. If the person is streaming a on-demand video, can they fast forward/rewind and etc?
Yes, they can skip around if they'd like.

3. Do the active-x controls have the ability to fast forward/rewind an on-demand video??
I don't believe so.

3. What can I use to edit a NSV file? Specificaly I would like to be able to edit the video and audio so I can place clips in between one another. Sometimes I run into a full tape and need to insert another tape into the clip.
You can't directly edit NSVs yet, but there are some workarounds. First of, capture to AVI or something, then edit it before you encode. You can also attach several NSVs by zipping them together with 0 compression (store) and renaming extension to nsv.

4. I hear VP6 is the best codec to use for streaming, and for quality of picture. The problem that I am running into is that I am recording one of my classes. The camera is showing everytihng just fine, but replay after encoding it I run into a some what fuzzy picture which at times can be hard to read. I figure each stream will be 300K, so with 300K how can I fix the streams picture so you can read what is being written on the board?? On the camera you can totaly see the board and read everything just fine. I have been using VP3 because VP6 just looks horid compared to VP3...so that makes no sense because I have read in more then one spot that everything works much better on VP3.
Thats odd that VP3 wields better results ofr you instead of VP6. All I can recommend is try playing around with the settings of VP6 until you find one that works. If VP3 works better than VP6, use 3 instead, no one will hold it against you

5. It would be nice to put a subtitle on the screen at the bottom of the video with information such as the date, and subject of the class. But the capture program does not always place this information into the file when capturing it from the video camera. How can I fix this when this blunder happens. Would much rather edit the file then have to play the entire 1 1/2 hour tapes and hope that the capture program didnt mess up.
With nsvubmux (included in nsvtools), you can add subtitles to files after they are encoded. Just make a simple .srt file (google or search forums to find out syntax of these) and nsvubmux will insert it into the video.


Hope this helped.

[BullWeivel]

Originally responded to by ken52787
1. How can I make it so that a person can stream on demand a certain video? Will this work if I have 5 people online and all 5 of them streaming a different video???
Just upload the nsv files to a web server and link to them. They will then be able to be watched whenever someone wants, and yes, you can have multiple people watching different vids.

Can I ask what a link would look like?

I have already tried doing this:
http://stream.domain.com:8000/;vidmov/filename.nsv

But all it is doing is catching the file that I have in the stream. I took a look at the links from the NSV examples but they are using PHP so I can't compare how they are calling the videos. I probably have the server setup wrong.

Right now the server constantly streaming one file for now, but eventualy I will set it up with a playlist that streams all the files within the vidmov directory. Any ideas on how to easily cover the entire directory instead of having to add each file?

How do I fix the on demand issue??? im sure its something to do with the sc_nsv.conf file, but what do I put in there to make it stream the videos which are on demand? Also note the videos will also be in the rotation once I figure that part out.

Thanks again!
Tom

[Jay]

he said webserver not shoutcast server.

ex: http://jay.xmhosting.com/media/play.m3u

[BullWeivel]

Originally posted by KXRM
he said webserver not shoutcast server.

ex: http://jay.xmhosting.com/media/play.m3u

Alright..that makes more sense now. Thanks!

Hrmm...the next step is to figure out how to create a pull down menu for use with the active-X controls. So the person can chose which video they want to view.

Would be nice to see a gallery of what people are doing with the Active-X controls, and some of the tweaks they have come up with.

Also any idea on how to make the server randomly chose files within a directory to play the videos?

Thanks again

[Jay]

Originally posted by BullWeivel
Alright..that makes more sense now. Thanks!

Hrmm...the next step is to figure out how to create a pull down menu for use with the active-X controls. So the person can chose which video they want to view.

Would be nice to see a gallery of what people are doing with the Active-X controls, and some of the tweaks they have come up with.

Also any idea on how to make the server randomly chose files within a directory to play the videos?

Thanks again

this would all require trivial scripting, I suggest you look into PHP or ASP or other server side languages.

[BullWeivel]

That is awesome!

You can stream your content on demand and you do not need the streaming server AT ALL!

All you need is a webserver and you can place the file(s) you want to stream onto the webserver and presto. That is it!

If you are using active-x controls you can simple point the active-x controls to the URL for the file which is on your webserver and presto. On demand video!

That is awesome..i love it! Wonder how well it works with IIS, and other webservers. Right now im using Apache.

Tom

[Jay]

Originally posted by BullWeivel
That is awesome!

You can stream your content on demand and you do not need the streaming server AT ALL!

All you need is a webserver and you can place the file(s) you want to stream onto the webserver and presto. That is it!

If you are using active-x controls you can simple point the active-x controls to the URL for the file which is on your webserver and presto. On demand video!

That is awesome..i love it! Wonder how well it works with IIS, and other webservers. Right now im using Apache.

Tom

this is pretty much true of all streaming formats. Not sure why people miss this or do not get it and think they need some special server to do this.

[EricZone]

Because its not streaming, its downloading !
Streaming will load as you play it, leaving you some available bandwith to do other things.
Downloading will use maximum bantwith at beginning.

[Jay]

Originally posted by EricZone
Because its not streaming, its downloading !
Streaming will load as you play it, leaving you some available bandwith to do other things.
Downloading will use maximum bantwith at beginning.

not true, streaming and downloading are only differenciated at the client not the server.

[B0b]

Originally posted by KXRM
not true, streaming and downloading are only differenciated at the client not the server.

Downloading uses TCP, streaming uses UDP. There is a major difference.

[Jay]

Then, according to your definition, SHOUTcast is not a stream server. SHOUTcast has always only used TCP.

[radstream]

Originally posted by KXRM
not true, streaming and downloading are only differenciated at the client not the server.

I don't want to get in the middle of a religious battle here, but there is a difference on the server. Yes, SHOUTcast uses TCP where other streamers use UDP... This alone cannot be the differentiation. Here is the difference in an example:

We have a playlist with five 100MB NSV files.

When streamed, the server makes the content available to the consumer (client) in pseudo-real time. Only the current chunk is available for the client to request and receive. Chunks before or after the current pseudo-time frame are not available.

When downloaded, via TCP, HTTP, FTP, whatever, the server provides it in non-pseudo-realtime and is client specific. If the client wants to receive the content as fast as possible, it will potentially fill up all available bandwidth to do so. Alternately, the client could opt to dig into the depts of the transfer protocol and request downloaded content as it is played. Another problem with static downloads is that if the consumer does not listen/watch the entire file, the bandwidth is wasted!

This example is, of course, only considering 'pull' type streaming. 'Push' streaming is a whole other ballgame.

Dangers: Streaming is by its nature, a little more difficult to save on the consumer's computer. In these copyright crazy times, this is an important distinction. That is a plus for streaming. Allowing content for download/play, like posting a static M3U playlist targeting static content on an Apache or IIS server gives the consumer ample opportunity to simply download your content.

Just my 2 cent's worth... If I'm wrong, just let me know!
Ken