Watching Full Movie Options 8
Streaming technology has made listening to music or watching movies via the internet as easy as turning on the radio or TV. Here is how the technology works.
The very first music and movie files you might find online were just short clips because you had to download the whole file before you could play it. In the present day, on the contrary, you may start playing the file as soon as the first bytes begin to arrive... thanks to streaming.
This immediacy is possible because streaming will not send files on the internet the same since many other files are sent. It uses an alternative protocol.
A protocol is a set of rules defining how two computers connect with each other and the way they send each other data.
Most data that is sent through the internet is first broken up into packets (small blocks of data). The packets are sent separately and are the rejoined at their destination to ensure that the receiver gets the whole file.
The sending of most data over the internet is governed by a set of rules called the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Streaming however uses the User Database Protocol (UDP).
These two protocols are quite different. The crucial difference is in how they look for errors.
If one packet gets damaged when downloading has been controlled by TCP, downloading will be suspended while that packet is resent. That way, in the event the download has been completed, you may be sure that you have the entire data file.
Whenever you are streaming files, alternatively, UDP allows packets to get lost now and then without interrupting the downloading. This is fine because, when an occasional packet is lost, you are unlikely to notice any interruption to the music or movie. But if everything froze very briefly while a lost packet was being resent, you probably would notice the interruption.
With streaming technology, you don't have to wait for files to be downloaded entirely prior to deciding to can begin listening to audio or watching a video. You can listen to a concert on another side of the world in real time, make a video call or watch movie a film just like on television.
Streaming video works in a similar way to streaming audio, except that the video has to be split into its separate audio and video components when it's in the buffer within the RAM.
The server that holds the video for streaming may have a video capture expansion card which could capture either a live feed from a video camera or a pre-recorded video. The capture board turns the analogue signals it receives into digital data and compresses it.
At the same time, it employs a trick to avoid having to capture more data than it needs in order to make transmission easier.
When the camera used to record the video is stationary, ie, it is not panning, the total amount of data created can be reduced. This may be done because all moving images are made up of a series of frames (still images) that change in rapid succession to offer the illusion of continuous movement. The rate is normally 30 frames a second which gives the video a smooth look.
The compression system reduces the range of frames needed by comparing adjacent frames and only taking account of pixels that change from one frame to another. It does this by establishing just what the background looks like.
As long as the camera remains yet, only the changes within the frame, such as the movement of the actors, have to be transmitted. The background only has to be transmitted again after the camera starts to pan and the background changes.
Video streaming may also skip frames when your Internet link is slow, which may make the video jerky. Thus the faster your connection, the smoother the video will be.
When your computer receives the video signals, it's going to decompress them and load them into a small buffer in RAM as it does for audio.
At this point the signals are split into separate video and audio components that are sent to the video card and sound card respectively, whence they're output to your monitor and speakers so you can watch the movie and hear the sound-track.
