Quote:
Originally Posted by raymor
I think the point about the bit rate of the videos is worth repeating.
Take two videos that are each ten minutes long. One is 100MB
and the other is 50MB. The 50MB one is going to take half as
long to download, of course, so it may well download fast enough
to play continuously, while the 100 MB one would be buffering half
the time.
Of course it does stupid things, it's used WINDOWS. ;)
Both server and client. The server can suggest that the client cache it, suggest that the
client not cache it, make it easy to cache, etc., but in the end it's up to the client. The client
CAN cache anything it can display, and it can decide NOT to cache anything, regardless
of what the server suggests.
You'll notice that even the simplest the simplest set up, just serving the video files
straight from the same Apache server as the rest of your site, will generally allow
them to cache and work pretty well overall. The main thing that a specialized
streaming server buys you is the ability to fast forward, something that Apache
can't always do. Contrary to popular misconception, a seperate streaming server
doesn't get you better performance, lower load, etc. Yes, it's possible to load up
Apache with 100 different modules that you aren't using and therefore increase
memory usage and add a touch of CPU usage, and many people do that because
they don't know any better. However, a reasonably configured Apache will perform
as good or often better than a separate streaming server and you get all of the
advantages of keeping your whole site together, such as having videos displayed
in your regular server stats, being able to secure them the same way you secure
the rest of your site, and generally treating them as just another file. So for a great
many sites, a separate streaming server may be completely unnecessary and
really only adds extra hassle and expense. Consider therefore what you plan
to gain from streaming server. If you're answer is just "performance" or "load"
give me ten minutes to fix your Apache config and save you a lot of hassle.
PS - Yeah some sites use a streaming server for "advanced" DRM options.
Several huge companies have spent tens of millions trying to get DRM to
work and all eventually gave up on DRM, so I don't consider that a good
thing to do at all, much less a god reason to run extra servers.
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Thanks for the answer bro, i already found my way, i'm hiring a new server and will be using lighttpd, i'm not concerned about security tokens and all that shit, and at the end, if the movie is played on the clients machine, then there is some space where you can hook to capture the unencrypted video stream ;P For how you talk you probably understand what i'm talking about :P So i still dont get why people use Media Servers instead of using http streaming which lets you cache the stream which will help you with those surfers which have a slow peer to your network and are not able to watch it real time without buffering each second .... Using http streaming with lighttpd will let you in the worst case for slow connection clients maybe "try to detect their connection speed" and in the worst case make the player buffer a big chunk of video each time it seeks and then the stream will continue downloading while they watch the previous big downloaded chunk ....
Anyway, in resume for those interested on this subject, for what i could research, big sites such as metacafe/youtube are using lighttpd ... using mods for streaming h264/flv, this gives the players out of the box the ability to cache already played stream which will help you save bandwidth if user seeks back a lot which i guess they use to do ... we also avoid the proxys troubles you sometimes have using RTMP, plain http connections which are supported by any ISP transparent proxy or firewall .... On the other hand i dont need to install/maintein/pay a different streaming solution and PLUS i take down the huge apache guy and use a small solution which is claimed to be way waster and burn less server performance to serve just what i need lightttpd+mod264+modrewrite+php using fastcgi+mysql and i think i'm done ....
So in resume, UNLESS YOU ARE INSTERESTED IN DRM/CONTENT PROTECTION ( And Again, If Client is watching content, you are never safe about this .... ), the best way to go is using http streaming, FMS have no sense at all .... unless you really know what you are doing and are trying to develop some strange/elite application which probably no one in this forum is :P
So hope this help new guys trying to figure out the best solution for their streaming content :P