Streaming -Reply -Reply -Reply -Reply

Janet Lessner (N10JEL1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 11:40:58 -0600

I got the info from Jim Nollsch at Real Ed. You might also
check in with him? I'll forward his e-mail to you just in
case you didn't see it earlier. After we got his e-mail, we
heard from Stephan that Jim had indeed confirmed the
suitability of a Pentium II. Maybe that info was wrong,
huh? Anyway, what I'm after here is trying to determine if
there's a way we could be doing streaming from herre so
that when we offer the service to outside clients, we aren't
having to pay Real Ed's fees and then add our own on top of
that. I do understand that there will be costs to do it on
campus, but hopefully we could do it more cheaply than the
Real Ed charge.

>>> Jay Orbik <C10JMO1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU> 01/27/98 05:08pm >>>

We must be talking to sales and engineering at the same
time.
Their specs require a dual processor to do live capture at
15 frames per second. This is the same technique for
netcasting or encoding directly into a Real file. You can
use a Pentium II but the frame rate and quality will go
down. I talked to the guys at Real that encode and even they
recommend breaking video into smaller chuncks. They are seem
to be bypassing their own system as well. They shoot their
video with a digital camera and use firewire technology to
import directly into their computer. This still results in
very large file sizes (10 minutes=1GB). Then they re-encode
using the Real encoder. Anywa, they are using a Pentium 200
Dual Processor with a 11 GB hard drive. There seems to be
some disagreement within the Real ranks as to what is
do-able. I will follow up with them again. I am also pricing
out such a system with a local vendor.

#2. Are you asking whether Media Services will purchase such
a system or can you do it? Right now there are no plans for
us to do this. If we did , as always, we would provide the
service at no labor cost providing it was for the
development of instructional materials for use at NIU.
Organizational use or support for other than NIU faculty
would be charged back. Hourly rates would depend on t the
nature of the use.

>>> Janet Lessner <N10JEL1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU> 01/27/98 04:14pm
>>>
Actually, Real Ed tells us we can use a Pentium II for
webcasting, so would that work for streaming as well? I'm
easily confused on all this. Basically, Real Ed said they
could encode any length video for us and would charge us by
the hour. I just wanted to know what kind of equipment they
had to do that. If we could afford to get the equipment,
could we do it ourselves and avoid their hourly
charge?

>>> Jay Orbik <C10JMO1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU> 01/27/98 02:41pm >>>
It would be the same configuration used for capture live for
broadcast except you are saving it as a file. Real
recommends a Dual Pentium Procesor -Windows NT system for
images up to 15 frames per second.
You are going to be limited by your hard drive storage
space. How much you can store on a 2 or 3 GB drive depends
on whether you encode the file at T-1 or 28.8 modem speed.
How many multi-hour tapes do you have in mind?
What is the application?
Is this for on campus or off campus?
I'll check a local vendor to find out the computer prices.