Streaming multimedia is multimedia that is constantly received by, and normally displayed to, the end-user while it is being delivered by the provider. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs). The verb 'to stream' is also derived from this term, meaning to deliver media in this manner.
Audio size
Streaming media storage size (in the common file system measurements megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and so on) is calculated from streaming bandwidth and length of the media with the following formula (for a single user and file):
storage size (in megabytes) = length (in seconds) · bit rate (in kbit/s) / 8,388.608
(since 1 megabyte = 8 * 1,048,576 bits = 8,388.608 kilobits)
Real world example:
One hour of video encoded at 300 kbit/s (this is a typical broadband video for 2005 and it's usually encoded in a 320×240 pixels window size) will be:
(3,600 s · 300 kbit/s) / (8*1024*1024) give around 130 MB of storage
If the file is stored on a server for on-demand streaming and this stream is viewed by 1,000 people at the same time using a Unicast protocol, you would need:
300 kbit/s · 1,000 = 300,000 kbit/s = 300 Mbit/s of bandwidth
This is equivalent to around 125 GiB per hour. Of course, using a Multicast protocol the server sends out only a single stream that is common to all users. Hence, such a stream would only use 300 kbit/s of serving bandwidth. See below for more information on these protocols.
Audio Format
An audio file format is a container format for storing audio data on a computer system.
The general approach towards storing digital audio is to sample the audio voltage which, on playback, would correspond to a certain position of the membrane in a speaker of the individual channels with a certain resolution — the number of bits per sample — in regular intervals (forming the sample rate). This data can then be stored uncompressed or compressed to reduce the file size.
It is important to distinguish between a file format and a codec. A codec performs the encoding and decoding of the raw audio data while the data itself is stored in a file with a specific audio file format. Though most audio file formats support only one audio codec, a file format may support multiple codecs, as AVI does.
There are three major groups of audio file formats:
Uncompressed audio format
There is one major uncompressed audio format, PCM, which is usually stored as a .wav on Windows or as .aiff on Mac OS. WAV is a flexible file format designed to store more or less any combination of sampling rates or bitrates. This makes it an adequate file format for storing and archiving an original recording. A lossless compressed format would require more processing for the same time recorded, but would be more efficient in terms of space used. WAV, like any other uncompressed format, encodes all sounds, whether they are complex sounds or absolute silence, with the same number of bits per unit of time. As an example, a file containing a minute of playing by a symphonic orchestra would be the same size as a minute of absolute silence if they were both stored in WAV. If the files were encoded with TTA, the first file would be marginally smaller, and the second file taking up almost no space at all. However, to encode the files to TTA would take significantly more time than encoding the files to the WAV format.
The WAV format is based on the RIFF file format, which is similar to the IFF format.
BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) is a standard audio format created by the European Broadcasting Union as a successor to WAV. BWF allows metadata to be stored in the file. See European Broadcasting Union: Specification of the Broadcast Wave Format — A format for audio data files in broadcasting. EBU Technical document 3285, July 1997. This format is the primary recording format used in many professional Audio Workstations used in the Television and Film industry. Stand-alone, file based, multi-track recorders from Sound Devices, Zaxcom, HHB USA, Fostex, and Aaton all use BWF as their preferred file format for recording multi-track audio files with SMPTE Time Code reference. This standardized Time Stamp in the Broadcast Wave File allows for easy synchronization with a separate picture element.
Lossless audio formats
Lossless audio formats (such as TTA and FLAC) provide a compression ratio of about 2:1.
Free and open file formats
Open file formats
Proprietary formats
Audio size
Streaming media storage size (in the common file system measurements megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and so on) is calculated from streaming bandwidth and length of the media with the following formula (for a single user and file):
storage size (in megabytes) = length (in seconds) · bit rate (in kbit/s) / 8,388.608
(since 1 megabyte = 8 * 1,048,576 bits = 8,388.608 kilobits)
Real world example:
One hour of video encoded at 300 kbit/s (this is a typical broadband video for 2005 and it's usually encoded in a 320×240 pixels window size) will be:
(3,600 s · 300 kbit/s) / (8*1024*1024) give around 130 MB of storage
If the file is stored on a server for on-demand streaming and this stream is viewed by 1,000 people at the same time using a Unicast protocol, you would need:
300 kbit/s · 1,000 = 300,000 kbit/s = 300 Mbit/s of bandwidth
This is equivalent to around 125 GiB per hour. Of course, using a Multicast protocol the server sends out only a single stream that is common to all users. Hence, such a stream would only use 300 kbit/s of serving bandwidth. See below for more information on these protocols.
Audio Format
An audio file format is a container format for storing audio data on a computer system.
The general approach towards storing digital audio is to sample the audio voltage which, on playback, would correspond to a certain position of the membrane in a speaker of the individual channels with a certain resolution — the number of bits per sample — in regular intervals (forming the sample rate). This data can then be stored uncompressed or compressed to reduce the file size.
It is important to distinguish between a file format and a codec. A codec performs the encoding and decoding of the raw audio data while the data itself is stored in a file with a specific audio file format. Though most audio file formats support only one audio codec, a file format may support multiple codecs, as AVI does.
There are three major groups of audio file formats:
- Uncompressed audio formats, such as WAV, AIFF and AU;
- Formats with lossless compression, such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio (filename extension APE), WavPack (filename extension WV), Shorten, TTA, Apple Lossless and lossless Windows Media Audio (WMA); and
- Formats with lossy compression, such as MP3, Vorbis, lossy Windows Media Audio (WMA) and AAC.
Uncompressed audio format
There is one major uncompressed audio format, PCM, which is usually stored as a .wav on Windows or as .aiff on Mac OS. WAV is a flexible file format designed to store more or less any combination of sampling rates or bitrates. This makes it an adequate file format for storing and archiving an original recording. A lossless compressed format would require more processing for the same time recorded, but would be more efficient in terms of space used. WAV, like any other uncompressed format, encodes all sounds, whether they are complex sounds or absolute silence, with the same number of bits per unit of time. As an example, a file containing a minute of playing by a symphonic orchestra would be the same size as a minute of absolute silence if they were both stored in WAV. If the files were encoded with TTA, the first file would be marginally smaller, and the second file taking up almost no space at all. However, to encode the files to TTA would take significantly more time than encoding the files to the WAV format.
The WAV format is based on the RIFF file format, which is similar to the IFF format.
BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) is a standard audio format created by the European Broadcasting Union as a successor to WAV. BWF allows metadata to be stored in the file. See European Broadcasting Union: Specification of the Broadcast Wave Format — A format for audio data files in broadcasting. EBU Technical document 3285, July 1997. This format is the primary recording format used in many professional Audio Workstations used in the Television and Film industry. Stand-alone, file based, multi-track recorders from Sound Devices, Zaxcom, HHB USA, Fostex, and Aaton all use BWF as their preferred file format for recording multi-track audio files with SMPTE Time Code reference. This standardized Time Stamp in the Broadcast Wave File allows for easy synchronization with a separate picture element.
Lossless audio formats
Lossless audio formats (such as TTA and FLAC) provide a compression ratio of about 2:1.
Free and open file formats
- wav – standard audio file container format used mainly in Windows PCs. Commonly used for storing uncompressed (PCM), CD-quality sound files, which means that they can be large in size — around 10 MB per minute. Wave files can also contain data encoded with a variety of codecs to reduce the file size (for example the GSM or mp3 codecs). Wav files use a RIFF structure.
- ogg – a free, open source container format supporting a variety of codecs, the most popular of which is the audio codec Vorbis. Vorbis offers better compression than MP3 but is less popular.
- flac – a lossless compression codec. You can think of lossless compression as like zip but for audio. If you compress a PCM file to flac and then restore it again it will be a perfect copy of the original. (All the other codecs discussed here are lossy which means a small part of the quality is lost). The cost of this losslessness is that the compression ratio is not good. Flac is recommended for archiving PCM files where quality is important (e.g. broadcast or music use).
- aiff – the standard audio file format used by Apple. It is like a wav file for the Mac.
- raw – a raw file can contain audio in any codec but is usually used with PCM audio data. It is rarely used except for technical tests.
- au – the standard audio file format used by Sun, Unix and Java. The audio in au files can be PCM or compressed with the μ-law, a-μlaw or G729 codecs.
Open file formats
- gsm – designed for telephony use in Europe, gsm is a very practical format for telephone quality voice. It makes a good compromise between file size and quality. Note that wav files can also be encoded with the gsm codec.
- dct – A variable codec format designed for dictation. It has dictation header information and can be encrypted (often required by medical confidentiality laws).
- vox – the vox format most commonly uses the Dialogic ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) codec. Similar to other ADPCM formats, it compresses to 4-bits. Vox format files are similar to wave files except that the vox files contain no information about the file itself so the codec sample rate and number of channels must first be specified in order to play a vox file.
- aac – the Advanced Audio Coding format is based on the MPEG2 and MPEG4 standards. aac files are usually ADTS or ADIF containers.
- mp4/m4a – MPEG-4 audio most often AAC but sometimes MP2/MP3
Proprietary formats
- mp3 – the MPEG Layer-3 format is the most popular format for downloading and storing music. By eliminating portions of the audio file that are essentially inaudible, mp3 files are compressed to roughly one-tenth the size of an equivalent PCM file while maintaining good audio quality.
- wma – the popular Windows Media Audio format owned by Microsoft. Designed with Digital Rights Management (DRM) abilities for copy protection.
- atrac (.wav) – the older style Sony ATRAC format. It always has a .wav file extension. To open these files simply install the ATRAC3 drivers.
- ra – a Real Audio format designed for streaming audio over the Internet. The .ra format allows files to be stored in a self-contained fashion on a computer, with all of the audio data contained inside the file itself.
- ram – a text file that contains a link to the Internet address where the Real Audio file is stored. The .ram file contains no audio data itself.
- dss – Digital Speech Standard files are an Olympus proprietary format. It is a fairly old and poor codec. Prefer gsm or mp3 where the recorder allows. It allows additional data to be held in the file header.
- msv – a Sony proprietary format for Memory Stick compressed voice files.
- dvf – a Sony proprietary format for compressed voice files; commonly used by Sony dictation recorders.
- mp4 – A proprietary version of AAC in MP4 with Digital Rights Management developed by Apple for use in music downloaded from their iTunes Music Store.
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