Streaming Without a Streaming Server with Flash (Pseudo Streaming)

The Adobe Corporation has a monster hit on its hand with Flash. The latest Flash Player, version 10, had been downloaded to almost 60 percent of computers worldwide within two months of its release. It has become the standard of choice on the Internet, for video publishers of all kinds, from the occasional poster to the professional pitch makers.
The problem for publishers has been finding a way to give random access to viewers without having them wait to download the entire video stream. This means that they need a way for the server to supply a particular portion of the video, so the idea is to let the viewer’s fast forwarding be handled (quickly!) as a request for video images between certain time points.

How It Works

When dealing with Flash, there are three options for streaming. A progressive download requires no particular server-based software of any kind, while streaming needs software such as Adobe's Flash Media Server installed on the server. Pseudo streaming, on the other hand, is a progressive download combined with server-side scripting in other words, instructions for handling the stream that are stored and carried out on the server that will allow random access to the portions of the video not yet downloaded. The process is sometimes called HTTP pseudo streaming, although we will use the shorter term here.

Pseudo streaming can be implemented on regular old HTTP servers running Apache, lighthttpd, Tomcast, IIS or other protocols. The server-side script manages the communication between Flash and the server. The viewer’s Flash player sends a request to the server that specifies a start time, an HTTP request that inserts the time parameter into the requesting URL’s query string. This results in the server script serving up a video stream with the requested starting position. This is the technique employed by the super-popular YouTube service, since it is known to use lighthttpd servers.

Limitations and Issues

Selecting the best method for you depends on the applications, the server and its capabilities, your target audience and, of course, your budget. Still, pseudo streaming is not simply a cost-cutting move for small firms or independent publishers, as it can be put to good use in a range of applications by all kinds of companies. Web TV, online product demos, e-learning, movie trailers and video blogs (vlogs) can all benefit from the ease of setup, its dead-simple use and the low cost of the functionality.
There are, of course, some limitations that must be considered. The most important one is how many simultaneous PHP connections your web server lets you make. Any publishers who want to broadcast live streams or service thousands of simultaneous viewers will still need to reply on streaming server systems. Adobe is ready for them, of course, with its Flash Media Server technology.

Benefits

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