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Darwin Streaming Server Beats Real, Windows Media
pinqkandi writes "Network Computing recently ran an extensive shootout of video streaming servers, in areas from setup to quality to buffering times. The free, open source Darwin Streaming Server, which streams QuickTime content, edged out costly and closed source Windows Media & RealVideo streaming systems." Well, it edged out Real. It blew Microsoft away.
There are ways to make quicktime videos without purchasing Quicktime pro, but most of them don't work very well, or use older versions of the quicktime mpeg4 based/inspired codec.
Can the darwin streamer be used to stream any other kind of media?
Tarkin support? Tarkin? Tarkin, anyone?
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Even if it only "edged out" Real in terms of streaming speed/whatever, it certainly blows the doors of Real in terms of quality.
Their "fractal" algorithm or whatever they're calling it has been ready for retirement for the last 3 years. Can you say artifacting? Especially in medium to high motion scenes. At low bandwidth it's about the only way to go, but for broadband applications, it's just ugly.
Not only that, but I'm glad to see another alternative in streaming media. More choices is inevitably better.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
This would be a lot cooler if *everything* about Quicktime were open (including codecs). It's pretty silly that I can run the streaming server on Linux but I have to go to Windows or Mac to view the content.
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get your war on
and if you have to use 1.5 Mbps, why not just use MPEG. I would say WM and Real both do well at low and mid-range bitrates, but the sorenson codec sucks at anything but high bitrates.
The review didn't mention anyting about frame rate or video size. quality was mesured from screen captures, so I guess video framerate and audio are not part of the streaming media experience.
They also should have used S-video for all captures. The osprey 500 DV applies a filter when you use the IEEE 1394 port. This is not an apples to apples comparison. Why not just use the winnov card for all captures?
They also didn't mention how many streams a single server could handle. Real requires a heavy duty server, QT doesn't realy have specs, and I would bet Windows Media server does the best job.
And WTF is with the apple networking icon? Is there realy a need for that?
I have wondered for the longest time why a number of news outlets use Windows Media on their web sites, when the quality / stability totally blows. Maybe they're Microsoft trained gnomes who only use FrontPage, write ASP, and use IE. I don't know. But QuickTime blows the $hit out of everything else. I just wish more people recognized that.
You only need all the extra stuff if you're doing live broadcasting. You don't need a $2000 video digitizing card; if you have a Firewire camcorder, you just need a $15 Firewire card (assuming you don't already have Firewire; a lot of hardware does these days, including everything from Apple). As for the rest, Apple has its own broadcasting program ready to ship as soon as the MPEG-4 licensing people come to their senses, so soon you won't need Sorenson Broadcaster or the Sorenson 3 Pro encoder. Apple's program will be free, but probably Mac-only. Still, it's going to be cheaper to buy a G4 to do your live digitizing than to pay the Real server tax.
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"We created screen shots of the same scene from each player at different encoding rates: 56, 128, 256, 384 and 512 Kbps."
So they're not even testing motion or sound quality?
If I had moderator points right now, you'd get a +1 insightful from me.
I've been working with streaming media for a while - windows media (yeah, I know, that's one of the reasons why I quit). Guess why this corp would go for WM - because "everyone" has WMP, and they get the server "for free" with Win2k server. Real is extremely expensive (they'd have needed the unlimited license), and they don't even consider QuickTime an alternative - they don't want clients to have to download a player, anyway.
Lessons: 1. corps don't want their clients to have to download a player. 2. They don't want to pay horrid licences (MPEG-LA - hear that? You're losing one hell of a business with that licensing scheme!).
You are saying that one of the reasons you are using WMP is privacy concerns? Then have I got news for you; WMP keeps a log of all the video's that you have played, and teh liscence agreement that you agreed to could be interpreted to say that Microsoft has the right to use this information in any way they choose.
Pick another reason for using WMP, please.
I've got it and it is...OK. It is slow as molasses, however. To run the quicktime plugin (or windoze media) you have to wait for the wineserver to start and then for the app to start. Lots of swapping going on there.
It IS nice that for now we can have quicktime working on linux but it is not THE answeer. THE answer is for frickin' Apple to release the goddamn specs for the codec. If Apple wants to compete for providing internet media (this goes for M$ or anyone else too) then you have to use widely available standards so that no one is locked out because they use this or that OS. The frickin' OS shouldn't matter one bit.
If you want to provide a media service on the OPEN and NONPROPRIATORY internet, then use open standards or fully publish your codecs so developers can produce apps to VIEW your media.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
An AC wrote:
;) Microsoft's developers don't seem to mind the sky high cost of Visual Studio.Net. Lets see Microsoft give that away for free!
> Its a classic Bait and Switch. Apple will always charge money for
> video compression deliverred stock in their normal Quicktime, and
> will never offer source to the compressors.
Apple doesn't have the rights or the ability to give you the source to the compressors of others that they license to use in QuickTime. Good Grief! The whole reason they are not releasing QT6 is because the MPEG-4 people are demanding that content creators pay them a tax to use it, over and above the $2 million Apple will be paying them to license it. Apple is going to bat for its users here, and you have the gall to blame them for not giving you someone else's source code!
> Apple charges (GOUGES) its dwindling developer base.
Oh yeah, right! A whole twenty bucks to get a CD of their developers tools FedExed to your doorstep. Wow, that's highway robbery!
The old Apple was greedy and stupid, sure. Their greed nearly killed them. The new Apple, born in December 1996, is on the whole, wiser and more compassionate. This is the Apple that:
- Based the core of their new OS on open source (and gave back the source, which was not required by the license).
- Slashed the price of their Web Objects from $50,000 to $699.
- Gave away their OS X developer's tools for free download ($20 for CD).
- Went to bat for their users to avoid extra end user charges (for MPEG-4 content creation) for Quick Time Pro users.
- Opened the source of their Darwin Streaming server.
- and a lot more.
> Developers have priciples... and the number one priciple is that they
> HATE being exploited.
No, you just hate having to pay to get anything in life.
> They expect Apple to PAY THEM to read new manuals, not the other
> way around.
>
> They expect Apple to PAY THEM to adapt and ebrace new proprietary
> system technologies, not the other way around.
Actually, that is what your *employer* pays you for, and expects you to do if you want your salary to continue going up. If you are programming as a hobby, it is its own reward.
> They always give long marketing-speak excuses why they wanted 895
> dollars for newton programming manuals
>
> They use excuses such as : default IBM OS/2 programming manuals
> from IBM cost 5000 dollars in March 1987.
>
> Sigh.......
>
> OS/2 is dead, Apple.
So's Newton, so why are you expecting to be able to get programming manuals for it, at any price? Anyway, IBM OS/2 didn't die due to the price of the programming manuals (actually, last I heard, another company was still developing versions of OS/2).
> Offer some video compression source code (pay your consulting
> suppliers if you need to) or shut the hell up.
It's two million dollars (plus content creating costs) just to put MPEG-4 in QuickTime. Do you really want Apple to go broke to give you free source code?
If you want the source that badly, go gripe at the MPEG-4 people.
> I hope Darwin crap dies as well as slow buggy MAc OS X.
> (Mac-O-Sux)
Oh, go argue point with Aqua Mothra! Grrr...
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected an apple tree.
On December 14, 2001, she returned to see its fruit:
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
Apple has repeatedly expressed a willingness to port QuickTime to other platforms, if the vendor pays for it. Doing a QuickTime port of a quality of the MacOS or Windows product would require on the order of a hundred engineer-years. Remember, the port of QuickTime 3 to Windodws required reimplementing a huge portion of the MacOS toolbox on Windows, tying it into DirectX.
While it would be nice to have a Linux client, it certainly wouldn't make Apple any money. There are a lot of stuff QuickTime needs that I'd rather have the engineers work on (native B-frame support and multichannel audio are two big examples).
Plus, a Linux/UNIX port is a moving target. Framebuffers? X11? Different window managers? RPM? How many different target processors to optimize.
Remmber, QuickTime is on the order of complexity of the Linux kernel.
My video compression blog
Then just surrender the damn codec(s) as ELF libraries or something and let the existing players take care of it. As far as I know, only the Sorensen codec is needed, and it's not like releasing a UNIX version of it will decrease their market share (just the opposite) or suck enormous revenue.
With just the codec as a library, it won't matter how much the target moves since the existing media players will do the Xv/SDL/GGI/VESA/etc. stuff on their own.
And because Linux can use it automatically means FreeBSD and others can use it as well through Linux emulation.
Granted this will never happen since Apple will feel it'd be better to have nothing at all than have anything less than a fully "featured" client.