10 C H A P T E R © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved1 Streaming Media and Synchronized Multimedia One of the ways the Internet is changing the world is by converging the world’s communications media into a digital data stream that can be delivered over the Internet.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved2 C H A P T E R 10 Objectives:  Understanding why streaming is an important strategy for delivering multimedia over the Internet  Define streaming and name the different kinds of media that are being streamed over the Internet  Go to Web sites where you can see and hear streaming media in action

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved3 C H A P T E R 10 Objectives:  Know when and where to download the latest streaming media plug-ins and drivers  Understand how the synchronized multimedia integration language (SMIL) is making it possible to create, publish, and deliver synchronized multimedia content over the Web.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved4 C H A P T E R 10 Streaming Media  A stream is a real-time feed from an audio or video source, encoded in such a way that the media can begin playing steadily without making the user wait for the entire file to download to their computer.  The three most popular platforms for streaming media were Real Networks, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Media Player.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved5 C H A P T E R 10 RealNetworks RealNetworks is one of the best-known multimedia streaming companies on the Internet. Its two main families of products are RealAudio and RealVideo.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved6 C H A P T E R 10 Apple QuickTime QuickTime is Apple’s brand of multimedia. The QuickTime player is free.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved7 C H A P T E R 10 Microsoft Media Player  Microsoft has created its own product line of streaming media servers. The player, which is free, is called the Microsoft Media Player.  If you have windows, there is probably a version of the Microsoft Media Player installed on your computer.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved8 C H A P T E R 10 Yahoo! Broadcast  Yahoo! Broadcast is Yahoo’s directory of audio and video content.  There you can access programming from more than 500 radio stations and networks, 65 television stations and cable networks, and game broadcasts from hundreds of college and professional sports teams.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved9 C H A P T E R 10 National Public Radio  Now that NPR is streamed on the Web, antennae are no longer an issue.  The NPR Web site provides not only the 24- hour news stream, but also lets you search via keywords through the NPR archives of online programming.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved10 C H A P T E R 10 National Public Radio Live broadcasts and archived news can be searched and listened to at the National Public Radio site.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved11 C H A P T E R 10 Synchronized Multimedia  To provide a standard way for Web page authors to synchronize different kinds of multimedia events, the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) is creating a new language called SMIL.  SMIL stands for Synchronized Multimedia Implementation Language.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved12 C H A P T E R 10 Synchronized Multimedia at the Discovery Channel The Discovery Channel used SMIL to create the slide shows in Moonwalk.