First Presentation on MCDS

1. Media Content Delivery Systems
…Or MCDS
Brendan Ashby and Lindsey Kennard

2. Initially, I had curiosities
 How is video presented over the web?
 What containers and codecs are used?
 How do you handle various bandwidths?
 How do you handle large audiences?
 What constitutes HD delivery?
 How to keep Buffering low?
 How to keep seeking instant?
 How to secure your files, limit bandwidth,
prevent hotlinking/deeplinking?

3. Quick Survey – “TIL”
 What is H264 versus x264?
 Is MKV a good video codec?
 What is WebM and WebP?
 What is a .ass file?
 How do you protect your online video
media from stream rippers?
◦ Flash tries so hard at this
 What is .f4v?

4. The Hunt for HD
 The driving force for finding other web video
solutions was a search for
◦ Minimal Re-encoding
◦ Support for the latest codecs
◦ Adaptable to a web environment
 Not satisfied with the flash status quo
 The project developed into 2 parts
◦ Video Streaming technologies
◦ Database management

5. Ok, so how does video get to you
 WMP - .asx .asf mms
 Quicktime - .mov .m4v
 Flash - .flv .swf .f4v (The Big one)
At first I thought that was all…
 HTTP Pseudo streaming
 Mpeg Part 14 Support (H264/AAC) through flash (.mp4)
 RTMP Streaming – RTMPT (HTTP Proxy)
 VLC’s Plug-in – Java based
 HTML5 <video> Ogg Vorbis
 Silverlight - Smooth Streaming
I looked at all of these. :D

6. H264 Pseudo Streaming
 Run by code-shop guys
 Works on all major web servers
 Allows instant seeking
 Quick buffering
 Bandwidth Shaping
 Dynamic bandwidth (I.e. Smooth Streaming)
 http://h264.code-
shop.com:8080/testlist.html

7. Flash newly Supports: .mp4 .mov (H264/AAC)
 Flash has moved on from the lossy .flv
and the need to reencode to play video
through it.
 They natively support all parts of Mpeg
and .mov. Specifically, H264/ACC codecs.
 http://www.flashstreamworks.com/video/
1080pgpu.html

8. RTMP Streaming
 Instant Playback
 Efficient Bandwidth Usage
 Instant Seeking
 Adaptive Bandwidth Shaping
 Included in all Adobe Flash Server Products –
Proprietary Protocol
 Very Secure, only current chunk is in flash
memory, hard to stream rip, hard to steal.
 http://flowplayer.org/plugins/streaming/rtmp.html
 RTMPDUMP: http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/

9. VLC Web-plugin
 Lacks any advanced features
 Free, highly customizable
 Plays everything VLC can play (Duh)
 http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/20
09/07/02/found-how-to-embed-vlc-806-
player-in-html/

10. Silverlight
 Video encrypted in Silverlight web plug in
 Allowed for specific bandwidth shaping
 Change bitrates on the fly
 No buffering, Instant seeking
 Supports all VFW formats, can convert to
necessary formats using free encoders
 Admittedly a pain to use,
◦ only likes to work in IIS servers
◦ takes a lot of storage space
◦ encoder is inefficient
◦ community is lacking
 http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstrea
ming1080p

11. HTML5 <video>
 Currently uses open source Ogg vorbis codecs.
 Google is pushing their own VP8 adapted format
called WebM (WebP for images)
 Most know about fight between apple, mozilla,
opera, and microsoft over what codecs should
become standard for HTML5
◦ Issues revolve around costs, licensing, and quality
 Most browsers support the current HTML5, but
not all of HTML has not been standardized yet.
 http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/demos/bigb
uckbunny-videoonly.html

12. Where Next
 Working on the web server, changing from
IIS7.0+Adobe FSS (streaming server) to
Apache on linux.
◦ Exploring common modules for web streaming
and file security (e.g. mod_auth_token)
 Exploring smooth streaming method not
on IIS: http://smoothstreaming.code-shop.com/trac
 Exploring database management methods
◦ MySQL and such for managing metadata
◦ Storing and retrieving efficiently
◦ Watching BW usage (myrpi.org)

13. Early Database Talk
 Store all data for specific files
◦ Unique IDs, Delimited
◦ Create RSS/XML for each file as necessary
◦ Video specific metadata can be pulled by
FFmpeg libraries
 Early Scripting Demo

15. Some Output
 SldWrl 1280x800 WS.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/Ultimate_Wallpaper_Pack_Pt1_by_Phoenix_06/Shield
World Construction/SldWrl 1280x800 WS.jpg
 1266790316469.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/1266790316469.jpg
 Konachan.com - 36909 enma_ai jigoku_shoujo.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/Konachan.com - 36909 enma_ai jigoku_shoujo.jpg
 1270396601255.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/1270396601255.jpg
 earth-wallpapers_11064_1680x1050.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/earth-wallpapers_11064_1680x1050.jpg
 1283671379882.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/1283671379882.jpg
 mikumix_wp007_1920.jpg:::./HDD/Backround
Slides/database/mikumix_wp007_1920.jpg
 …

16. Final Thoughts
 Maintain a database to manage many
video files – Tags, Metadata, …
 Present a web fronted library to end-user
for traversal.
◦ Users can add videos to a vote pool
◦ Users can vote on what video to be viewed
 Creates a community-driven vote-based
web-streaming solution.
◦ “It’s like were all watching TV together and
voting on the channel”

17. Demo Site
 Stream Server: http://stream.rpigaming.com
 Website: http://anime.rpigaming.com
 Status: http://stream.rpigaming.com/server-status

18. Thanks again :D
 Thanks to hosting.myrpi.org (student
senate)
 Thanks to the RCOS IRC
 Thanks to awesome Mr. MSK and Mr. Sean
Brendan Ashby | Lindsey Kennard
http://mcds-rcos.tumblr.com/
http://github.com/ashbyb/MCDS/
ashbyb@rpi.edu kennal@rpi.edu