Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

For broadcasters, web developers, and project managers implementing streaming media systems, David Austerberry shows how to deploy the technology on your site, from video and audio capture through to the consumer's media player. The book first deals with Internet basics and gives a thorough coverage of telecommunications networks and the last mile to the home. Video and audio formats are covered, as well as compression standards including MPEG-4 and the leading proprietary architectures. The book then guides you through the streaming process showing in-depth how to encode audio and video. The deployment of media servers, live webcasting and how a stream is displayed on the consumer's media player are also covered. A third section on associated technologies illustrates how you can protect your revenue sources with digital rights management systems; looks at various forms of content delivery; offers guidance on how to monetize your content with ad insertion, and provides examples of successful streaming applications. The supporting website www.davidausterberry.com/streaming.html offers updated links to sources of information, manufacturers and suppliers. David Austerberry is a freelance writer and consultant on webcasting technologies. He has presented papers on interactive television and digital asset management. He has worked in product marketing for many of the top broadcast equipment manufacturers.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. ix)
• Acknowledgements (p. xi)
• Section 1. Basics (p. 1)
• 1 Introduction (p. 3)
• 500 years of print development (p. 3)
• 100 years of the moving image (p. 4)
• The Web meets television (p. 5)
• Convergence (p. 7)
• What is streaming? (p. 7)
• Applications (p. 9)
• How this book is organized (p. 10)
• Summary (p. 10)
• 2 IP networks and telecommunications (p. 13)
• Introduction (p. 13)
• Network layers (p. 14)
• Telecommunications (p. 25)
• The local loop (p. 30)
• Summary (p. 37)
• 3 The WorldWide Web (p. 39)
• Introduction (p. 39)
• WWW (p. 41)
• Web graphics (p. 43)
• Proprietary tools (p. 47)
• Web servers (p. 47)
• Summary (p. 49)
• 4 Video formats (p. 51)
• Introduction (p. 51)
• Scanning (p. 52)
• Color space conversion (p. 55)
• Digital component coding (p. 60)
• Videotape formats (p. 64)
• Time code (p. 72)
• Interconnection standards (p. 73)
• High definition (p. 75)
• Summary (p. 76)
• 5 Video compression (p. 77)
• Introduction (p. 77)
• Compression basics (p. 78)
• Compression algorithms (p. 79)
• Discrete cosine transform (p. 83)
• Compression codecs (p. 85)
• MPEG compression (p. 87)
• Proprietary architectures (p. 95)
• Summary (p. 98)
• 6 Audio compression (p. 99)
• Introduction (p. 99)
• Analog compression (p. 100)
• Digital audio (p. 101)
• The ear and psychoacoustics (p. 106)
• The human voice (p. 109)
• Lossy compression (p. 111)
• Codecs (p. 113)
• Codec standards (p. 114)
• Proprietary codecs (p. 123)
• Open-source codecs (p. 124)
• Summary (p. 125)
• Section 2. Streaming (p. 127)
• 7 Introduction to streaming media (p. 129)
• Introduction (p. 129)
• What are the applications of streaming? (p. 130)
• The streaming architecture (p. 134)
• Bandwidth, bits and bytes (p. 142)
• Proprietary codec architectures (p. 145)
• Summary (p. 148)
• 8 Video encoding (p. 149)
• Introduction (p. 149)
• Video capture (p. 154)
• Compression (p. 162)
• Encoding enhancements (p. 165)
• Encoding products (p. 168)
• Limits on file sizes (p. 170)
• Summary (p. 172)
• 9 Audio encoding (p. 173)
• Introduction (p. 173)
• Audio formats (p. 175)
• Capture (p. 177)
• Encoding (p. 180)
• File formats (p. 181)
• Summary (p. 184)
• 10 Pre-processing (p. 186)
• Introduction (p. 186)
• Video processing (p. 186)
• Audio (p. 194)
• Summary (p. 200)
• 11 Stream serving (p. 201)
• Introduction (p. 201)
• Streaming (p. 202)
• Webcasting (p. 211)
• On-demand serving (p. 214)
• Inserting advertisements (p. 215)
• Playlists (p. 217)
• Logging and statistics (p. 218)
• Proprietary server architectures (p. 221)
• Server deployment (p. 222)
• Summary (p. 225)
• 12 Live webcasting (p. 226)
• Introduction (p. 226)
• Planning a webcast (p. 226)
• Video capture (p. 230)
• Graphics (p. 231)
• Audio capture (p. 232)
• Encoding (p. 234)
• Summary (p. 235)
• 13 Media players (p. 237)
• Introduction (p. 237)
• Portals, players and plug-ins (p. 239)
• Digital Rights Management (p. 247)
• Summary (p. 247)
• Section 3. Associated Technologies and Applications (p. 249)
• 14 Rights management (p. 251)
• Introduction (p. 251)
• The value chain (p. 254)
• Digital Rights Management (p. 255)
• The rights management parties (p. 261)
• System integration (p. 264)
• Encryption (p. 264)
• Watermarking (p. 267)
• Security (p. 268)
• Examples of DRM products (p. 269)
• Summary (p. 276)
• 15 Content distribution (p. 278)
• Introduction (p. 278)
• Content Delivery Networks (p. 280)
• Corporate intranets (p. 289)
• Improving the QoS (p. 294)
• Satellite delivery (p. 295)
• Summary (p. 296)
• 16 Applications for streaming media (p. 298)
• Introduction (p. 298)
• The news site (p. 300)
• Corporate communications (p. 301)
• Music promotion (p. 302)
• Producing rich media (p. 304)
• Digital asset management (p. 305)
• Summary (p. 316)
• And finally (p. 318)
• Glossary (p. 319)
• Abbreviations (p. 323)
• Index (p. 325)