Rich Media on a Tight Budget
By: David Glassman, Onstream Media
It’s hard to imagine that just a few short years ago, advanced rich media capabilities were primarily available to large, Global 2000 companies that had the financial means and technical resources to implement. Services that formerly cost thousands of dollars to store and stream high-end video over the Internet, can now cost as little as $100 a month.
Hosting and streaming costs have plummeted over the years due to new compression technologies, ubiquitous high-speed Internet access, readily available bandwidth and lower storage costs, to name a few. As a result, website managers today can easily implement any number of new media strategies to their web presence without breaking the bank, including video on demand, user-generated content, podcasts, auction video, audio and video testimonials, product showcases, flash demos and more.
The days of custom built, proprietary, and needlessly expensive systems for storing and streaming video through your website are over. There are sophisticated, easy-to-use web-publishing tools that provide clients of all sizes and industries with a secure, affordable web-based system for storing, managing, publishing and delivering live and/or archived digital media over the Internet.
In fact, you no longer need a monster budget or even the technical expertise to easily:
| • | Upload, manage and deliver audio and video assets | |
| • | Organize rich media assets and directories in a familiar milieu | |
| • | Edit audio and video asset metadata | |
| • | Publish rich media assets to the Web | |
| • | Retrieve publishing URLs or XML code for embedding assets into existing Web pages |
In addition, website operators and media managers of small, medium and large businesses can now access premier content delivery networks (CDN) at a fraction of the cost from previous years without meeting onerous volume requirements.
Leveraging today’s established CDNs provides the instant scale and distribution capabilities needed to overcome the delays and connection problems that often complicated internal and single data center solutions of years past.
The extreme flexibility and versatility of the underlying technology available today, combined with the rich media delivery systems, enables content owners to take immediate advantage of solutions that were previously unavailable to the small to mid-tier webmasters. Today, Store and Stream solutions are typically subscription-based, so there are no up-front capital expenditure costs, making it an ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses as well as .org and .edu clients.
As for storing your rich media assets, there’s no shortage of offerings that scale to multi-terabyte storage levels with full back-up protection. Content link information can be automatically generated for rapid set-up and integration, making rich media content easily available to users on demand, anytime and anywhere.
Publishing rich media over the Internet has never been easier as well. Off the shelf tools enable website publishers to:
| 1. | Browse your hard drive for the file | |
| 2. | Upload. A publishing URL will be automatically generated. | |
| 3. | Paste the URL into your site page or Shockwave Media File if using Flash. |
It’s that simple. Publishing staff require little training because Store and Stream solutions use a standard, intuitive file management interface. And, most solutions support the delivery of practically any type of rich media file.
For example, Onstream Media’s Store and Stream solution enables:
| • | Publishing of non-streaming media file types which are delivered via Akamai’s geo-optimized file delivery methodologies. This is an ideal approach when distributing a file to large numbers or recipients and/or geographically distributed audiences simultaneously. | |
| • | File streaming services, allows for on-demand access to rich media content , via Akamai’s Adobe Flash streaming services. This ensures that Flash video will play quickly and smoothly to audiences across most modern computer operating systems.. | |
| • | Other streaming formats such as Windows Media, Real MP4 and QuickTime are available as well, enabling content to be delivered in a format appropriate manner. |
Now is the time to jump on the new media bandwagon and explore what you can do with video by adding low cost, rich media alternatives to your website and marketing mix.
Onstream Media Corporation (Nasdaq: ONSM) is an online service provider of live and on-demand internet video, corporate web communications and content management applications. For more information, visit Onstream Media at http://www.onstreammedia.com or
call 954-917-6655.
