Streaming service

Streaming is an alternative to downloading as a way of delivering media on the web. It lends itself well to serving high quality or long play content, with the following benefits:

  • Seeking speeds are greatly increased when jumping ahead/back on any audio or video file more than 5-7 minutes long.
  • Less bandwidth is used, particularly when the media is skimmed by the end user.
  • Streaming is more secure than downloading since it only allows portions of the media to reside in memory at any given time.

The Streaming Service is run by the Computing Service in collaboration with the Web Office, the A.V. Centre and the E-Learning Development Team.

Using streaming

This section outlines how to stream audio and video for public use on any website. Using this method, it is not possible currently to restrict access to streams, eg so that they are playable by staff only. Files stored within the Yorkshare VLE can be streamed securely within course areas. See the Yorkshare Headquarters for more information about this.

Information for staff

If you have media that you wish to make publicly available via streaming should contact your Departmental Web Officer. They should be able to help with publishing and work with the media in whatever form you have available (eg DVDs or raw digital files). Please also consider any relevant copyright or other legal issues.

Information for Departmental Web Officers

In future the streaming service will be integrated with the University's principal content repositories such as the Digital Library, as well as the VLE. In the meantime the streaming service offers a simple way to manage and publicly stream some long-play media by hosting it in a dedicated 'dropbox', accessible only by web officers (typically) and a few others within a department. The dropboxes are areas of networked filestore or 'mapped drives' whose contents are visible to the streaming servers.

1. Sign up

To apply for a streaming dropbox for your department, email itsupport@york.ac.uk, specifying:
  • the person to act as principal coordinator of the dropbox (typically the DWO)
  • up to three others that require access
  • the web address of your department or organisation on the University web site.

The size of the dropbox will be 5Gb initially. Size increases will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be subject to charging.

2. Connect to your dropbox as a mapped drive

The path to your dropbox will be \\streamfs.york.ac.uk\stream\your-department-name (eg \\streamfs.york.ac.uk\stream\physics). For help with mapping a drive see:

3. Convert your file

Your media will need to be in one of  the supported formats (either Flash video, H.264/HE-AAC encoded content stored in an MPEG-4 file, or MP3 audio).

See converting video for York streaming.

The A.V. Centre has limited resources to help with converting media where necessary, including digitising DVDs on request, and can access dropbox filestore directly. For all enquiries telephone x3033 or email the A.V. Centre.

4. Upload

To upload digital media to the streaming server simply place the file within your dropbox. Please note it is not possible to create subfolders within the dropbox.

5. Publish

If you are managing a University web site using the Web CMS please see adding streaming media to CMS pages, otherwise use the media player wizard to generate HTML that can be inserted into any webpage.

Technical information

Supported Formats

The service supports the following encodings and formats:
  • all variants of video, audio and metadata that can be stored in a Flash video file (.flv)
  • H.264/HE-AAC encoded content stored in an MPEG-4 file (.f4v, .mp4, .m4a, .mov, .m4v, .mp4v, .3gp, and .3g2)
  • MP3 encoded audio and metadata stored in an MP3 audio file (.mp3)

Troubleshooting

Streaming takes place using Adobe's Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), which makes use of TCP port 1935. Most local firewall settings should not require changes, however some firewalled environments may have to be configured to permit RTMP traffic over this port.

FAQs

Do you support live streaming?

There are currently no plans to support live streaming, however this is an area under investigation. If you have requirements for live streaming please register your interest by emailing itsupport@york.ac.uk.

What if I need to stream to a restricted audience, for example staff only?

Unfortunately this is not currently possible for media held within dropboxes. If this is an issue for you, please raise this by emailing itsupport@york.ac.uk.

I can stream files from the dropbox, so why can't I download them?

Downloading large media files can tie up server resources significantly. To avoid damaging the responsiveness of the University's web site at large, currently media placed in dropboxes is only available via streaming.

What streaming server do you use?

The streaming server currently used is Wowza Media Pro 1.7.

What Is the status of the service? Is it 'live' and resilient?

The streaming service is now a production-level or 'live' service fully supported by the Computing Service. Plans are in place for deploying a fully resilient load-balanced server architecture in the near future.

What are the future directions for the service?

Future plans have yet to be agreed, however there are a number of possible improvements that could be considered:
  • Digital Library integration
  • Support for other players and formats (iPhone, Windows Media, WAV)
  • Download servers to allow downloading of media from dropboxes
  • Dynamic bandwidth detection (like the BBC iPlayer)
  • Web CMS integration
  • Live streaming
  • Record video from webcam (like YouTube)