Saving Streaming

Military Intelligence
One of the earliest adopters of streaming recorders was the U.S. military. The U.S. Army’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense arm of the Missile Defense Agency had a real-time streaming system constructed for monitoring long-range ballistic missile system tests in the South Pacific. Layer8 Technologies, a company that specializes in multimedia systems design and computer network engineering, went with ZyGoDigital’s ZyGoVideo codec when building the first two facilities to collect and distribute video, audio, and other data in real time.

ZyGoDigital LLC also offers its ZyGoCasting Solution for the live capture and simultaneous broadcast of multiple streams of content. "The military’s our primary customer," says ZyGo’s president and CEO, Rod Sheffield. Much of ZyGoDigital’s development work has been in using their "very low bandwidth" ZyGoVideo codec to deliver surveillance footage wirelessly to PDAs carried by border patrols. Delivering live video to handhelds isn’t necessarily relevant to saving streaming, as PDAs and the like still don’t have sufficient storage capacity to handle the hours of video that surveillance can generate. Even still, "We think that our solution fits really well into what people want to do with surveillance video," says Sheffield.

The most widespread application of saving streaming for enterprise customers is found in security and surveillance. There are numerous options available to consumers and SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises) for throwing together moderately sized, and priced, security systems. Network cameras, or IP cameras, have built-in Web servers allowing them to stream video feeds directly over the Internet. Some offer proprietary desktop players that can be set up to archive video to a hard drive continuously, during certain hours of the day, or whenever there is motion present, assuming the camera has motion detection capabilities. Others only need a standard browser for viewing. This technology can be found in packages that range from home management systems like Shell’s HomeGenie, which offers single-camera IP surveillance as just one feature among many, to D-Link’s Securecam Network, with up to 16 wireless cameras that can alert you via email the moment anything moves.