Industry Perspectives: Best Practices for Flawless Web Multimedia Streams

Streaming multimedia has gone mainstream in a big, even global, way. In the U.S. alone, according to comScore Networks, internet surfers watched 11.5 billion videos in the month of March, an increase of 13% over February numbers. This summer, it’s been reported that NBC recorded 3,600 hours of Olympic action in China. The larger share of this coverage—2,200 hours’ worth—wasn’t seen on television. Instead, it was distributed on the NBC Olympics website by way of video streaming technology.

This could be the "Lindbergh moment" for web video. NBC’s "all-in" investment establishes online video as something far more than a YouTube toy or a blogger’s plaything. That "something more" could mean a new standard for video distribution. It almost certainly will set new standards for customers who will expect future online video to be at least as good as the high jumps they saw in China. Whatever the Olympics meant for NBC, it certainly was a turning point for streaming multimedia: live video is now an inevitable part of the overall web experience.

But are you ready to make the leap?

Created from years of experience monitoring and measuring web performance around the world, the advice below presents some important insights on multimedia streaming best practices—and what you can do to protect the quality of multimedia web experiences.

Start at the End
Your first move is to visualize the end result—a destination that reflects favorably on your business. The goal? A seamless, TV-like performance without starting delays, interruptions or rebuffering hiccups.

Do not deceive yourself: in the viewer’s eyes (and these are the eyes that matter,) a "broken" web video is as bad as one that’s unavailable. And an "unavailable" web video is far worse than unavailable elements on a web page. When the latter occurs, the main body of the page remains intact; when videos go down, there’s nothing left but a black, empty screen—and the dark emotions of a frustrated customer.

Achieving your multimedia business goals begins with a clear look at your operational resources. You must be able to ensure that every stream…
•…is available to ALL your site visitors. Can they see it in Hoboken, Hawaii and Hong Kong?
•…is delivered to visitors in a timely manner. What is the start-up time for users? Are there delays?
•…is offered consistently. Is the viewer experience in Timbuktu the same as it is in Tennessee? And does it remain the same during different times or days—and during special events that increase traffic?

To do this in-house requires the technological muscle to pump quality streams through an infrastructure fire hose. The truth is, few institutions, even those with robust web servers and enough bandwidth, have the systems in place to manage the exceptional demands of acceptable video performance. Like most organizations, you may have to turn to a content delivery network (CDN) that specializes in multimedia streaming.