Streaming

[Buoux]

Just wondered what size of files people stream over their college/school networks... Some Genius here wants us to start streaming dvd's over our network (about 4gb ish each)... Does anyone else do this ?

If they do, what compression software do you use and how effective is it ?

Thx for your time...

[srochford]

Don't think you can actually stream DVDs but you could convert them to WMV which will stream nicely using Windows Media Server (part of Windows Server)

Super will convert MPG2 to WMV.

There's a fair bit of work in doing the initial conversion but after that it's well worth while. The only real issue is copyright ...

[CyberNerd]

VLC will stream dvd
VideoLAN Streaming Howto

[CyberNerd]

btw, A 4GB dvd stream isn't that much if the DVD lasts two hrs

4096Mbyte * 8 = 32768 Mbit
32768/120(min) = 273 Mbit per minute
273/60 (sec) = 4.5 Mbit/Sec

crap knows how to factor in tcp overhead (if someone can show me...) but it shouldn't strain the network unless your already nearing capacity.

It would make more sense to use something like FlashVideo | drupal.org
and have your webserver create your own youtube type application, I've been manually ripping DVD (legal) and using ffmpeg to encode them to flash FLV. I can then upload them into moodle classes

[Buoux]

Thank you for peoples input, it has give me some ideas.