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Streaming Media Guidelines

The use of streaming media to deliver information is quickly becoming ubiquitous, and its use at Hopkins is increasing. In a research environment like Hopkins, content providers have found all sorts of uses for streaming media. Today, course sites are providing links to streamed course lectures to broaden their audience and allow students to review material; researcher sites are providing links to streamed content related to their projects and results; administrative sites are providing streamed content related to their departments' services and instructional material for staff; and much more.

Streaming Overview

Streaming technologies enable viewers to experience audio and video over the World Wide Web. The viewer needs a player, which normally is a plug-in that comes bundled with a web browser, such as QuickTime or RealVideo, or it can be downloaded directly from those sites and installed on your computer. In the early days of the Web, audio and video files were downloaded onto your hard drive and then viewed once the entire file rested on your computer. With streaming, the file is not downloaded, and you cannot save it or make a copy of it. A site at University of North Carolina  (http://www.unc.edu/cit/streaming/whatisstreaming.html) gives a good overview of streaming media. Additional information about streaming media is available at the following web sites:

• Streaming Media World (http://www.streamingmediaworld.com/)
• streamingmedia.com (http://www.streamingmedia.com/)

Streaming media may affect you in two ways at Johns Hopkins: You may want to view streamed content and/or you may want to provide streamed content from your web site.

Viewing Streamed Content on Your Desktop

To view streamed content on your desktop computer, you'll need to install software designed to "play" streamed content. Most vendors providing playback software offer a free version. While vendors are beginning to provide versions that will play content streamed by other companies, it is still a good idea to install playback software designed specifically for playing the streamed content you want to view.

Most sites providing streamed content also provide links to download the appropriate playback software for viewing that content.

Since most sites are streaming content using products from RealNetworks, Microsoft or Apple Computer, you may want to install playback software from one or more of  these companies to get started.

Downloading Playback Software

The links below will take you to the download areas for RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player. At each site, you'll be asked to select your operating system and the site will determine the most appropriate version of the software to download. Players often come installed on many new desktop computers, so you might want to check to see if you already have one on your machine.

RealNetworks' RealPlayer

RealNetworks was a pioneer in streaming media and has established itself as a market leader with over 80 million registered users of its viewing software, RealPlayer. RealPlayer is available for PC, Macintosh and Unix users.

Microsoft's Windows Media Player

Microsoft Windows Media Technologies software is used by many sites streaming content on the Internet. Windows Media Player is available for PC, Macintosh and several other operating systems including Solaris and Palm.

Apple's Quicktime Player

One of the first applications to allow you to view video on your desktop, QuickTime is certainly one of the most popular formats for delivering media on the Web. QuickTime is available for PC and Macintosh users.

Serving Streaming Media at Johns Hopkins

“Do-It-Yourself”

Some departments and centers at Johns Hopkins have their own streaming media servers.  These areas include:

Serving streaming media means setting up a server and streaming media server software. If a department is not interested in purchasing and supporting its own streaming media server there are some options available.

Outside Streaming Media Services

Research Channel

ResearchChannel http://www.researchchannel.org/ is a consortium of research institutions and organizations whose common goal is to more widely distribute research information to the public, both nationally and internationally. Johns Hopkins University is a participant.

The ResearchChannel presents an on-demand video library and OnAir programming featuring high quality, high speed delivery of video (via Internet2) with lower bandwidth options available. Scheduled programs are OnAir on our 24x7 webcast.

For participant information go to:   http://www.researchchannel.org/participants/.

Enter userid: participant33
Enter password: 9400

Akamai Video Streaming Service

The Enterprise Services group administers a contract with Akamai to provide video streaming services for the Johns Hopkins Institutions. The service can work with source files stored on Akamai's servers or any local web server. The amount of Akamai storage is limited and must be shared by everyone, so local storage of media files is encouraged. By using the Akamai streaming network, no local streaming server software is needed. The links to the streaming media files or the contents of the metafiles are rewritten so that Akamai's global network of streaming servers does all the work. Johns Hopkins has a certain amount of bandwidth allocated according to our contract. The bandwidth utilization will be monitored to make sure no one group is using a disproportionate amount.

Here is a description from Akamai:

Delivering consistent and reliable streams

Akamai's proprietary SteadyStream(SM) technology ensures that only the highest quality streams reach your audience. For live broadcasts, SteadyStream uses sophisticated error correcting to send multiple copies of streams to the edges of the network, where they are recombined into their original-quality format.

Broad format and encoding rate support

Akamai supports all three major encoding formats - Apple(R) QuickTime(TM), Microsoft(R) Windows Media(TM), and RealSystem(R) G2 - for both narrowband and broadband use.

For more information or to begin utilizing the Akamai streaming service, please contact webhosting@jhmi.edu with Akamai in the subject line.

The Bloomberg School of Public Health maintains their own Akamai Service (http://distance.jhsph.edu/) apart from the Institution-Wide service available through Enterprise Services.

"Plug-in Free" Technology

Two software products that may be of interest to Johns Hopkins users wanting to deliver media rich content over the internet are: Impatica PowerPoint and Impatica OnCue. These products enable users of PowerPoint to deliver content plug-in free to Java-enabled computers, even at dial-up speeds.

Impatica OnCue enables production and delivery of synchronized plug-in free video with Impaticized PowerPoint presentations with searchable text, dynamic indexing and navigation.

Online training was delivered to new users of the Johns Hopkins Enterprise Messaging system using Impatica OnCue.

Go to http://nts.jhu.edu/es/jhemsite/ Click on the on-line tutorial or audio/visual links under "Training and Education." The files contain audio so you will need to have a sound card and speakers on your computer.

More information about these products can be found at www.impatica.com. If you want to purchase this software, contact software@jhu.edu

Contacts for Streaming Media at Hopkins

Aaron Brady
JHU Center for Communication Programs
ABRADY@jhuccp.org

JHUCCP has its own RealMedia Server (25 user license) running on a Linux box. The content it delivers are short video spots (up to 15 minutes each).  Videotaped content is digitized using a Mac G4.  A library of audio programs are planned to be digitized and served. Viewers are a national audience external to the Johns Hopkins network.

Mike McCoy
Johns Hopkins Bayview
mmccoy@jhmi.edu

The Bayview Online Intranet has existed since April of 1998. During that time, it proved to be a useful tool for many areas of the medical center. In the past few months, there have been several discussions at Bayview regarding the use of streaming media in conjunction with the intranet.

Members of the medical staff have made inquiries about using streaming media for staff and student education. One of those requests was fulfilled using the RealMedia Server on JHUniverse.  In the future, there will undoubtedly be more projects of this nature.

Glenn Small
Office of News and Information
glenn@jhu.edu

The Office of News and Information uses the RealMedia Server on JHUniverse to serve content.  “Virtually Live@Hopkins” is a Web page maintained by Glenn Small (http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/audio-video/ ) that presents a range of Hopkins-related events in video, audio, or audio with slides. An average of 8000 Mb/month of content is served from the web page.

Chris Vee or Frank Keller
Language Lab support
chris.vee@jhu.edu

The Language Lab broadcasts streaming media from Quicktime Server.  The streaming is limited to the lab area. The majority of content is audio for foreign language instruction. Content consists of 150Gb of movie and audio files. The lab has its own means of content production and post-production. The Digital Media Center is another potential customer of streaming media at Hopkins.

Katrine Gloukhov
SAIS
KGloukhov@mail.jhuwash.jhu.edu

SAIS currently runs RealMedia Server (25 user license). They are migrating from NT to Unix. Most of their content is audio and audio with slides. The content is listed for a month and then archived.  Production of content is handled either in-house or contracted out.  250-300 Mb/month of content is served to viewers.

Brian Klaas
Bloomberg School of Public Health
bklaas@jhsph.edu

JHBSPH is the leader in streaming media use.  Since 1996, they have been serving distance education content to 400-450 students around the world. Most content is audio with slides.  The broadcasts are either live or on-demand.  Production of the content is done in-house.

SPH uses Akamai’s streaming media services to serve the content.  Akamai gets the files from a normal web server via HTTP and then serves them out to users via UDP at the edges of the network from their streaming media servers.  Akamai charges by volume and not by the "event" like other service providers.  SPH serves about 40,000Mb/month of content.