Media Servers and Streaming

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We have come to central component in the media streaming jig-saw puzzle i.e. media server. A media server streams the streaming compatible file to the media players. Every media server has a publishing point or mount point which is a folder where the media server compatible media files can be placed.

Helix media server has a folder called “content” where the media files are placed. These media files in the “content” folder can be accessed through the URL rtsp://localhost:554/demo.rm where demo.rm is a media file in “content” folder. Subfolders can be created in this folder and accessed appropriately.
Windows media server has a similar folder where files can be uploaded

These mount/publishing points are configurable.

Most popular streaming protocol presently in use is RTSP. This protocol is supported by most of the streaming servers like

• Real Media Server
• Helix Media Server(Open source counterpart of Real Media Server)
• Windows Media Server
• QuickTime Media Server
• Darwin Media Server(Open source counterpart of QuickTime Media Server)

However it must be understood that H264 encoding streamed by these servers are different.

Other popular streaming protocols are

• MMS(Microsoft Media Services): Microsoft’s proprietary protocol
• RTMP(Real Time Messaging Protocol): Adobe’s proprietary protocol used by Adobe-flash media server.
• HTTP: HTTP can be also used to stream media. This streaming is also very popular because RTSP, MMS, RTMP are blocked by most of the firewalls. This streaming is not real time streaming but is called progressive streaming.

In Real Time Streaming there is constant flow of stream from the media server, While in progressive streaming, The steaming is done in small chunks as that is how HTTP does data transfer.

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