By Ronni Rhodes

As use of the Internet continues to grow geometrically, we see an increased demand for information to be provided by a variety of media. Viewing options can range from simple text to PDF documents to video clips. Unfortunately, each option requires more and more resources and technological know-how. As convergence moves inexorably forward, we have to ask ourselves if there is a practical way to combine the best of this technology and still provide the user with a satisfying Internet experience.

The answer, at this stage of Internet evolution, is audio.

Voice, by itself, provides the means to enhance a user’s enjoyment of the Internet. Voice conveys many of the intangibles underlying the written word. A voice can touch the human spirit and deliver a message on its’ own merits. Audio can build community and maintain relationships.

Audio is the most mature of the streaming technologies and doesn’t have the bandwidth requirements associated with video. Any Internet user connecting at 28.8k or better can enjoy FM quality sound without experiencing buffering and other annoyances that can affect video at lower bit rates.

It is common knowledge that people only retain 20% of what they read, but they do remember 70% of what they see and hear. That fact in itself increases the value of an audio message delivered from a website for the typical user. And, the implications of how audio can increase Internet enjoyment for the handicapped are overwhelming.

Streaming audio provides Internet businesses with unlimited opportunities to reach their audience and to simplify their interactions. Streaming audio broadens a product’s appeal and helps to stimulate sales. People are comfortable with audio and have few qualms about using it in their day-to-day lives.

Retailers can integrate audio into their operations in several ways. Use it to enhance product descriptions and deliver product information in ways far more persuasive than plain text. Booksellers can have “special events” that offer audio excerpts from selected titles. Art dealers can use voice to give value added information on an artist or a period of history depicted by an artist’s work. (Think of those audio tours that museums offer.)

Organizations that specialize in selling educational tools can use audio clips for potential clients to preview and evaluate the material being offered. The ability to sample the product is a potent and practical selling aid.

Business-to-Business sites and corporate Intranets can also harness the power of audio. The need to provide up-to-the-minute information for employees and customers can be well served with streaming audio and the telephone. Integrating audio into the corporate communications mix is a tool that is easy to use and addresses the need to communicate with a distributed work force.

In both the retail and business-to-business marketplace, audio can and should be used to maintain those all important customer relationships. Voice messages add a personal touch that intrigues the listener and encourages them to remain on the site.

Employee training is greatly enhanced with audio. Use it to orient new employees and keep the information archived on the site for easy reference. Sales training can also be archived and quickly retrieved when needed. The ability to offer customized audio training materials on a 24/7 basis makes streaming audio a very versatile and efficient learning tool.

Some words of caution are also necessary. Audio, just like any other value-added technology, has to be used judiciously. It should be employed for a specific purpose and to enhance the text based message being delivered. Think of your audience and how you’d like them to interact with your website. Keep in mind that your visitor may be coming to your site while they’re at their place of business and plan accordingly.

The future of streaming audio is bright and filled with promise. More and more Internet users have become familiar with streaming audio and use it everyday. Internet radio broadcasts are extremely popular and are now being employed as effective advertising vehicles. Audio e-mail messaging is becoming widely available and is being positioned as a practical business tool. Consumers are attaching audio messages to greeting cards and experimenting with Internet telephony. Streaming audio will allow the average Internet user the ability to create content that conveys the power of voice and the emotions that it conveys.

So…why aren’t you using audio?

Ronni Rhodes is the owner of WBC Imaging, an Internet company that specializes in web site enhancement utilizing streaming media technology. With her husband, Don, a digital media engineer, they work with companies to incorporate streaming as part of successful and meaningful sales and marketing programs.

Please direct all questions and comments to: Ronni@wbcimaging.com 520-742-5780 http://www.wbcimaging.com

By Ole Arndt

Streaming video is a sequence of “moving images” that are sent in compressed form over the Internet and displayed by the viewer as they arrive. Streaming media is streaming video with sound. With streaming video or streaming media, a Web user does not have to wait to download a large file before seeing the video or hearing the sound. Instead, the media is sent in a continuous stream and is played as it arrives. The user needs a player, which is a special program that uncompresses and sends video data to the display and audio data to speakers. A player can be either an integral part of a browser or downloaded from the software maker’s Web site.

Major streaming video and streaming media technologies include RealSystem G2 from RealNetwork, Microsoft Windows Media Technologies (including its NetShow Services and Theater Server), and VDO. Microsoft’s approach uses the standard MPEG compression algorithm for video. The other approaches use proprietary algorithms. (The program that does the compression and decompression is sometimes called the codec.) Microsoft’s technology offers streaming audio at up to 96 Kbps and streaming video at up to 8 Mbps (for the NetShow Theater Server). However, for most Web users, the streaming video will be limited to the data rates of the connection (for example, up to 128 Kbps with an ISDN connection). Microsoft’s streaming media files are in its Advanced Streaming Format (ASF).

Streaming video is usually sent from prerecorded video files, but can be distributed as part of a live broadcast “feed.” In a live broadcast, the video signal is converted into a compressed digital signal and transmitted from a special Web server that is able to do multicast, sending the same file to multiple users at the same time.

Streaming media is audio and video that are transmitted on the Internet in a streaming or continuous fashion, using data packets. The most effective reception of streaming media requires some form of broadband technology such as cable modem or DSL. A packet is the unit of data that is routed between an origin and a destination on the Internet or any other packet-switched network. When any file (e-mail message, HTML file, Graphics Interchange Format file, URL – Uniform Recourse Locater request, and so forth) is sent from one place to another on the Internet, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer of TCP/IP divides the file into “chunks” of an efficient size for routing. Each of these packets is separately numbered and includes the Internet address of the destination. The individual packets for a given file may travel different routes through the Internet. When they have all arrived, they are reassembled into the original file (by the TCP layer at the receiving end).

A packet-switching scheme is an efficient way to handle transmissions on a connectionless network such as the Internet. An alternative scheme, circuit-switched, is used for networks allocated for voice connections. In circuit-switching, lines in the network are shared among many users as with packet-switching, but each connection requires the dedication of a particular path for the duration of the connection. “Packet” and “datagram” are similar in meaning. A protocol similar to TCP, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) uses the term datagram.

MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group, develops standards for digital video and digital audio compression. It operates under the auspices of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The MPEG standards are an evolving series, each designed for a different purpose. To use MPEG video files, you need a personal computer with sufficient processor speed, internal memory, and hard disk space to handle and play the typically large MPEG file (which has a file name suffix of .mpg). You also need an MPEG viewer or client software that plays MPEG files. (Note that .mp3 file suffixes indicate MP3 (MPEG-1 audio layer-3) files, not MPEG-3 standard files.) You can download shareware or commercial MPEG players from a number of sites on the Web.

The term codec is an acronym that stands for “compression/decompression.” A codec is an algorithm, or specialized computer program, that reduces the number of bytes consumed by large files and programs. In order to minimize the amount of storage space required for a complicated file, such as a video, compression is used. Compression works by eliminating redundancies in data. Compression can be done for any kind of file, including text, programs, images, audio, video, and virtual reality (VR). Compression can reduce the size of a file by a factor of 100 or more in some cases. For example, a 15-megabyte video might be reduced to 150 kilobytes. The uncompressed file would be far too large to download from the Web in a reasonable length of time, but the compressed file could usually be downloaded in a few seconds. For viewing, a decompression algorithm, which “undoes” the compression, would have to be used.

There are numerous standard codec schemes. Some are used mainly to minimize file transfer time, and are employed on the Internet. Others are intended to maximize the data that can be stored in a given amount of disk space, or on a CD-ROM. Codec’s are used in many popular Internet products, including QuickTime, Netmeeting, Cu-Seeme, and VDOphone.

Flash, is a popular authoring software developed by Macromedia, and is used to create vector graphics-based animation programs with full-screen navigation interfaces, graphic illustrations, and simple interactivity in an antialiased, resizable file format that is small enough to stream across a normal modem connection. The software is ubiquitous on the Web, both because of its speed (vector-based animations, which can adapt to different display sizes and resolutions, play as they download) and for the smooth way it renders graphics. Flash files, unlike animated but rasterized GIF and JPEG, are compact, efficient, and designed for optimized delivery. Known as a do-it-yourself animation package, Flash 4 gives Web designers the ability to import artwork using whatever bitmap or illustration tool they prefer, and to create animation and special effects, and add sound and interactivity. The content is then saved as file with a .SWF file name extension.

Web users with Intel Pentium or Power Macintosh processors can download Flash Player to view Flash content, which performs across multiple browsers and platforms. Flash is lauded for being one of the Web’s most accessible plug-in. According to an independent study cited by Macromedia, over 90 percent of Web users already have Flash Player installed. Macromedia was recently acquired by Adobe in a 3.4 billion dollar deal.

About the Author: Ole Arndt is President of Global Media LLC, in Branchburg NJ.

Correspondence to: oarndt@streamingmediabiz.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ole_Arndt

By Mansi Aggarwal

The MP3 is a complete godsend for anyone who enjoys and appreciates good music. Not only does it afford users the convenience of purchasing music online and ripping from purchased CDs, it also provides the utmost ease in portability. There are more MP3 players on the market than I can name. These players allow you to download hundreds and in some cases thousands of MP3’s to take along with you anywhere. I create MP3 CD’s containing up to 120 of my favorite songs for my listening pleasure in my car. But how can so many audio files get stored on my 800MB (Megabyte) CD?

MP3 Encoders and MP3 converters are the software that creates MP3s by using an MP3 compression and decompression algorithm. For example, an average 3 minute WAV file can be as large as 15MB. Using MP3 encoders and MP3 converters, a large WAV file can be cut down to a much smaller and more portable MP3 file of about 3MB.

MP3 stands for MPEG Audio Layer 3. At layer 3, psychoacoustics principles are used to find and remove all unnecessary sound data, leaving behind only the crucial audio data. By unnecessary sound data I mean all of the stuff that we humans don’t hear anyway. Most people can’t hear sounds above 16 kHz so why would you want it hogging your disk or hard drive space? Non-music audio such as speeches, sermons, audio books and comedy albums, can be reduced even less based on this.

Compression occurs after the essential data has been separated from the redundant data. At this stage, the same amount of data can be stored using fewer bits and less space. The bit rate is the ratio of the number of bits transferred between two devices per second. The higher the bit rate, the higher the sound quality. The lower the bit rate ratio, the lower the sound quality. 192 Kb/s is the most popular bit rate used in peer-to-peer networks. For the most part, MP3 converters and encoders today use variable bit rates. This allows for much better quality audio because the bit rate conforms to the dynamics of the audio frames being stored which in turn keeps more of the important music data.

There are dozens of MP3 compressor and encoder software programs available online and at stores. Some of the main encoding engines are: LAME, Blade Enc, Fraunhofer Encoders and Xing. Deciding which MP3 encoding engine technology is right for you depends on your individual needs and preferences. Blaze Media Pro is an excellent option if you’re looking for a powerful, yet easy to use, all-in-one multimedia solution.