Mastering Internet Video: A Guide to Streaming and On-Demand Video (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Many companies today employ digital video on their web sites - think of newsclips on CNN.com or highlights on ESPN.com. A study released by the HTRCGroup estimates that 72% of companies currently use video, and that 97% planto do so in the near future. Internet Video ia a comprehensive guide that coversall aspects of adding video to a website. It explains the context, usage, andmethods for streaming digital video, and focuses on the technical aspects ofcompression, encoding, storage, and distribution. It explains how to scalesystems to meet demand for popular content, and demonstrates the advantagesof peer-to-peer distribution over the traditional broadcast model. It is writtenso that the reader begins with the basics, and progresses step-by-step to moreadvanced topics. It provides a balance of conceptual information and practicaladvice, complete with working code examples. Perhaps most importantly, it iscompletely vendor neutral, exploring the advantages and drawbacks of eachmajor vendor's products.

From the Back Cover

All you need to master preparing, capturing, compressing, securing, and delivering Internet video

Finally, there's a start-to-finish guide to Internet video for everyone who needs to understand it: Web professionals, managers, software developers, marketers, and hobbyists, even investors. Mastering Internet Video brings together clear, coherent coverage of every key issue: compression, formats, standards, servers, software, hardware, networking, multicasting, digital rights management, video editing—even troubleshooting. Damien Stolarz offers both conceptual and practical information, as well as coverage of all leading formats and platforms. Best of all, he presents easy-to-use, step-by-step solutions for each of today's most common Internet video usage scenarios. Coverage includes

• Comprehensive conceptual coverage of capturing, preparing, and deploying video on the Internet

• A practical guide to video compression—including expert help with performance and quality tradeoffs

• Objective information for evaluating streaming servers, software, and hardware—including solutions from Microsoft, Real, Apple, Macromedia, and others

• How networks and the Internet handle video data—including the challenges of real-time data delivery

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (August 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321122461
• ISBN-13: 978-0321122469
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #185,571 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Demystifies Streaming, September 10, 2004

By	Tim Kennedy "OnlineDelivery" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Internet video and streaming media mystifies people. Stolarz does a great job of cutting through the sorcery so that you can understand just how streaming media really works. The text is easy to read and the illustrations are well thought out. This is a great reference for the video engineer or Web master that is tasked with purchasing or implementing Internet video services. Extremely valuable is the "Quick List of Problems and Concise Solutions" (Appendix A) that will allow the reader to jump directly into specific topics of the book.

If you are looking for a definitive (and eventually time-dated) how-to manual on making streaming media, I would recommend Mack's "Streaming Media Bible." That will give you screen shots on using the big three (WindowsMedia, QuickTime, and RealNetworks). But at the very least, "Mastering Internet Video" should be an accompanying reference. And if you want to build an overall streaming media solution for your organization, "Mastering Internet Video" is your required reading.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly understand streaming technology in plain language, February 19, 2005

By	Stephen Antonucci (New Jersey) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author does a great job of explaining streaming in great detail for the layman or more advanced user in plain easy to understand language. This book is good for web master, video engineer, student, or just about anyone who has an interest in a detailed guide about Internet video.

I found this book easy to read and understand. It is very complete in regard to today's technology. I have recommended it to several of my co-workers. A feel this book is required reading for anyone looking to deploy streaming into their organization. Damien Stolarz seems to be a person that is not just a tech writer but a seasoned engineer that has spend much time in the trenches of Internet video. This book is well worth the money.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent technical overview of online video, August 20, 2006

By	Eric D. Austrew (Brookline, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book goes into the high level technical details of creating an online video service. As an absolute newcomer to the field, I found it an invaluable tool for dealing with the knowledgeable professionals that I rely on to do such things as analog to digital conversion and the set-up and maintenance of media servers. This book will not give you the expertise to do any of these jobs - for that you have to get your hands dirty and actually perform some of the tasks yourself. But it will give you a grasp of the concepts and terminology you'll need to manage the issues that come up.

The book is solid all the way through, but some topics are treated with more detail than others. The sections at the start about video capture, compression, and file formats are in depth and somewhat technical. Later section, including one on transport protocols and DRM, are considerably more vague, probably because they are such complex topics that even an overview takes up the alloted space. Still, when I was able to dive into the details of capturing video from analog sources, compressing it, and setting up the software to serve it, but I could not have even begun to attack the problems of setting up a transport standard or a DRM scheme.

It should also be noted that one chapter out of the 8 provided is on a topic (enterprise multicast) that is not relevant to most consumer focused video services.

If you're going to be involved with online video at all, this book is an excellent technical overview. Highly recommended.