Streaming Video Types Compared

OnlineVideo.net has an excerpt from Jan Ozer’s book: Video Compression for Flash, Apple Devices and Html5 where the three main types of video streaming are discussed: Streaming (“True Streaming”), Progressive Download and Adaptive Streaming, .  If you are new to the world of video streaming, this article is an excellent primer, this is taken from the Progressive Download section:

“Experientially, most files delivered via progressive download seem like streaming in that they begin to play once you click the button, and they continue smoothly until the end. For example, YouTube, ESPN and CNN all deliver without a streaming server. However, when delivering via progressive download, you can encode at higher rates than you could when delivering via streaming, because even if the data rate exceeds the viewer’s connection bandwidth, ultimately, it will reside on the viewer’s hard drive, from which it will play smoothly.” [Read More]

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