Table of Contents:

Definition and Overview

1. Preproduction Concepts for Audio and Video

2. Acquiring the Media

3. Editing

4. Preprocess for Streaming

5. Watermarking

6. Designing the Rich Media Presentation

7. Serving and Delivering the Media

8. The Final Step

Self-Test

Glossary

PDF of this tutorial

Preproduction is a critical step in preparing content for streaming on the Web. Knowing ahead of time what delivery platform will be used will set guidelines for creating and preparing the content. Choosing the media players to use as well as the basic design of the associated Web page will determine what kind of information must be gathered and what metadata options may be incorporated during the process of creating and editing content. For example, certain media players will allow for the display of author, copyright, and title information and—depending on the layout of the Web page—the metadata may be encoded to add headlines, captions, and other text that will be updated throughout the presentation. Being aware of the possibilities and of what must be done to take advantage of them represents a solid starting point.

Creating a storyboard that portrays the synchronization of the audio, video, and related metadata will clarify the goal of the production by providing a list of elements and information that must be gathered or produced. In essence, the storyboard will serve as a guideline for how the project should proceed.

Some content formats stream more effectively than others. One must take into consideration how the information will be used, what bandwidth parameters will be necessary, and whether or not presenting the information in a streaming format will add value to the message.

The content must be catered to the expected bandwidth. If a message is to be delivered over a corporate intranet with a fast Ethernet connection capable of 100–Mbps, full-motion video with high-quality audio may be delivered. On the other hand, if a message is to be delivered to an audience via a 28.8–kbps modem, the presentation should be limited to streaming audio with a slide show.

Another important topic to explore in the preproduction stage is interactivity. How much control will users be provided over how they experience the presentation? If users should ideally be able to skip certain portions of the presentation and move directly to the information in which they are most interested, metadata must be encoded, delivery platforms must be chosen, and hypertext markup language (HTML) pages that will provide such things must be built.