Streaming Question...

jrazz wrote on 6/10/2008, 2:20 PM

I have a client that asked me this today. I wanted to run it by "the forum".

Lets assume that there were just 150 views of one show in a day. Could all of those be happening at the same time?...i.e. 150 people streaming a show at exactly the same time. ...On Versus, we average having about 500,00 viewers each week and this is the total during 5 plays of that week's show. This equates to about 125,000 viewers watching the show at the same time each time it airs. How would those same numbers work on a website stream?

Anybody have any ideas on what would be needed to make this happen? Could blip.tv or vimeo.com handle that? And, if it costs money (which I am under the impression that streaming servers do, I think the client will be able to handle it).

Thanks for any advice,

j razz

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 6/10/2008, 3:00 PM

Multiply the file's bitrate by the number of simultaneous viewers. For example, 150 people watching a 500Kbps stream would be 75000Kbps or 73Mbps. That's a LOT of expensive bandwidth! There are actually two factors involved in hosting costs at most large facilities. One is the maximum burst bandwidth, which is the 73Mbps calculated above. The ISP will monitor your bursts and decided what sort of typical speeds you are using and set a pricing tier based on that.

The other factor is total data delivered over the course of the billing period. You may have a 73Mbps burst during that 5 minutes, but your traffic over the rest of the week might be zilch so your total data transfer is low. On the other hand, you might not have that many simultaneous viewers, but you might have an enormous number of downloads spread out all over the week. The ISP will usually set up a contract rate based on your best guess for total data transfer and then bill you extra for amounts above that level. You'll want to guess somewhat high because contracting for the amount in advance is much cheaper than paying the overage charges afterwards. On the other hand, you don't want to guess too high or you'll end up paying for a lot of transfer that doesn't get used. Most of the better ISPs will work with you over the initial few months and help you find a level that is appropriate.

There are a lot of web hosts that have specific plan packages listed on their websites, things such as "100Mbps burst, 100GB transfer per month for X dollars." You can do the calculations yourself and shop around. However, i suspect that the amount of data they are talking about will probably exceed most packaged plans and will probably require custom contracts.

richard-courtney wrote on 6/10/2008, 8:58 PM

You can also check into "multicasting" where the clients look at one stream
at a given time.

You send this stream on a specific time schedule. Check with your ISP if they
offer unicast to multicast.

Terje wrote on 6/10/2008, 9:25 PM

I'd also recommend your client give Vuze a shot. Vuze uses bittorrent to deliver content which means that it is a lot less bandwidth intensive. Particularly when you have many simultaneous viewers.

jrazz wrote on 6/11/2008, 11:36 AM

Thanks for the excellent information. I am waiting to hear back from them.

As for the bittorrent delivery, if that works how I think it does, they would have to download it then view it correct? I will look up vuze and maybe answer my own question. What they want is streaming at any time of day that someone feels like clicking to watch. They already have a big TV viewership, they just want to capitalize off their website.

Edit: Vuze is temporarily down. Does this happen often?

j razz

Terje wrote on 6/11/2008, 2:08 PM

I have not seen Vuze down before, but I guess it happens. I think you are correct that Vuze doesn't support streaming of progressive (watch while it is downloading) downloads.

Chienworks wrote on 6/12/2008, 3:49 AM

Bit torrent and streaming are mutually incompatible technologies. There simply is no possible way to stream a file delivered with bit torrent. A bit torrent download cannot be used or viewed until the download is 100% complete.

Also note that bit torrent is only an advantage when a file is popular enough to have a significant number of end users who wish to participate in hosting it. This is great for movies, music, and 'viral videos'. For content aimed at a specific target audience or material with a limited lifespan of appeal there may be no benefit whatsoever using bit torrent.