Unit 62 Assignment 1 Ezine

An idiot’s guide to the applications and technology used in digital video on the web

Ever wondered what lies behind the day to day videos you watch on websites? Well look no further! As this idiots guide will teach you the different ways in which digital video technology enhances a user's interactive experience on different delivery platforms as well as the understanding of the applications of digital videos. Our main aim is to educate you about the understanding of the principles of digital video technology in interactive media but, here is a big BUT the tricky part for us but the best part for you is we will present this in a funtertaining way!

Jargon buster

Have you ever wondered what certain terms mean in an article but couldn’t be bothered to search it up? Yh me too! Well we’ve created a ‘jargon buster’ especially for you! So if you get stuck on a specific term just flick back to this page!

·         Compression- In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction involves encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation.

·         Streaming-Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider.

·         File formats-A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file

·         Bandwidth-In computer networking and computer science, the words bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth

·         Media players-Media player is a term typically used to describe computer software for playing back multimedia files.

·         E-learning-E-learning includes all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching, including Edtech.

·         Lossy compression-In information technology, "lossy" compression is a data encoding method that compresses data by discarding (losing) some of it.

·         Lossless compression- Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data.

·         Applications- Application software, also known as an application or an app, is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks

·         Technology- Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function

·         User-generated content- User-generated content (UGC) covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies.

Picture of the different categories of digital video content on 'Sky Sports' website.

Many websites present there videos in many different ways for many different purposes, for example; the ‘Sky Sports’ website has many videos for different purposes from  the overall latest news on the latest clips to categorising of different sports about interviews after games or even discussions on a  specific section of the sport, the whole of this come under user-generated content, this covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies this includes digital video.

A picture of a advert being played before the actual video is played

Sky Sports also have adverts at the beginning of most of their videos which I personally feel that it’s a clever idea as it grabs the audience attention dependent on the video by the usage of strong colours, adverts are used to tell the audience what products the business or organisation are selling, services you provide and the type of business you do such as your new product your business or organisation is selling. So this means that the business or organisation who is trying to put an advert on the Sky Sports website will pay them a specific amount so that there advert could appear before the video so that they could promote their business or organisation. Sky spors stream there videos straight from their website they do this because it keeps the focus on the website whereas if they were to do a ‘downloading’ method it will lead to the viewer viewing the video elsewhere.

Sky Sports also have an application for mobile device users where they can stream games live directly from their phone! This definitely helps the interactivity of the user as they could use it whilst there on the move.

BBC iPlayer have a different purpose than to Sky Sports,  iPlayer  is an internet television, radio service and software application, developed by the BBC to extend its former RealPlayer-based and other streamed video clip content to include whole TV shows. Their main aim is to provide TV/ radio shows of previous episodes etc. But they also stream live channels such as BBC 1 etc.

One of the two key features BBC IPlayer posses is the downloading service they provide, use of peer-to-peer technology to enable the distribution of large video files (i.e. TV programmes) to scale effectively. Once downloaded, the content was only playable within the iPlayer itself or Windows Media Player 10 or 11, and subject to digital rights management.

The second feature BBC IPlayer also posses are the streaming of live online channels, this is also one of the many online platforms iPlayer have The BBC's streaming version of iPlayer, which uses Adobe Flash software, was launched on 13 December 2007. The streaming version of iPlayer offers replays of programmes broadcast on all BBC TV channels during the last seven days. Unlike the downloading of episodes where they last for up to 30 days.

Like Sky Sports BBC IPlayer have an application for both Androids and IPhones which helps the interactivity of the user and the website which includes the downloading of programmes from the application straight to the phone!

IPlayer has many television platforms, virgin media is just one of the television platforms and on the 30th April 2008 the iPlayer service was fed directly to Virgin Media's 3.4m digital cable TV customers as part of the company's video-on-demand service. Pressing the 'red button' while watching a BBC channel on TV will bring up the iPlayer service without the user having to access the web.

4OD is pretty much the same as iPlayer as they offer the same applications etc.  4oD is a video on demand service from Channel Four Television Corporation. Launched in November 2006, 4oD stands for "4 on Demand". The service offers a variety of programmes recently shown on Channel 4, E4, and More4 or from their archives. However some programmes and movies are not available due to rights issues.

Website platforms, 40D has many platforms on the World Wide Web one of the many is; channle4.com, 4oD is the main source of on demand programmes from Channel 4, E4 and More4, the catch up service currently lasts 30 days and the archive has thousands of hours of programming. As of April 2009, the internet version is fully available to Windows, Mac and Linux users with Adobe Flash Player installed.











Television platforms, one of the many television platforms 4OD posses is; virgin media, 4oD is available on Virgin Media's cable television service. This platform offers programmes for 7 days after broadcast and Virgin has exclusive use of most of Channel 4 archive which is free on XL package. In 2007, Virgin Media announced plans to offer high definition programming through 4oD but as of 2012 no further information has been released.

YouTube is a video sharing website, it allows people to share videos about anything with only a few amount of limitations, users can upload, view and share videos. uses Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos.

YouTube is completely different to the first 3 reviews I’ve done as it’s a videoing sharing website not an informative, or a live channel streaming website which YouTube actually do, YouTube offers users the ability to view its videos on web pages outside their website. Each YouTube video is accompanied by a piece of HTML that can be used to embed it on any page on the Web.

All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes each in duration. Users who have a good track record of complying with the site's Community Guidelines may be offered the ability to upload videos up to 12 hours in length, which requires verifying the account, normally through a mobile phone.

YouTube unlike the rest of the websites (iPlayer, 4OD and SkySports) gives the chance for the viewers to have their videos on their website by embedding the videos; Embedding is a code for the video. You take the embed code and post it on your website and then the video will show and people can watch it on your page, instead of having to go to YouTube and watch it this definitely increases the amount of user interaction on YouTube.

There are two types of data compression, one of the two is lossless compression and the second is lossy compression. Both has its advantages and disadvantages as stated in the table below;

Type of Data Compression	Advantages	Disadvantages
Lossy Compression	Lossy compression can give you a smaller file size.	The resulting end product may be in some ways inferior to the original.
Lossless Compression	Lossless compression results in a closer representation of the original media, and thus a higher quality end product.	The disadvantage is that the resulting file will be larger than if you had used a lossy compression format.
Summary of both data compressions	Lossy compression; files are small and have low-quality video.	Lossless compression- files are big and have good- quality video.

                  

  High level of compression

Low level of compression

Streaming, Streaming media is a multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. Its verb form, "to stream", refers to the process of delivering media in this manner; the term refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than the medium itself. A great example of the usage of streaming is BBC iPlayer as they stream previous episodes etc. They also provide ‘live streaming’ as they stream live channels directly from the website. Live streaming, involves a camera for the media, an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content.

The property that most affects your experience playing any type of streaming media over the Internet is bandwidth. Usually this means the maximum speed (Kbps) of your Internet connection, but it can also refer to capacity of the media server (how many data streams the server can provide), as well as other network constraints.

The advantages of the usage of streaming is that its free, quite easy to use and the viewer has the flexibility of watching anything at anytime, but on the other hand the disadvantage of this is that it can be illegal if you go against certain rights etc. Takes a while to buffer dependent on your bandwidth.