This practical workshop provides an in-depth look at the entire process of streaming media. The day begins with an overview of the basics, and then delves into original media creation, encoding, presentation authoring, and streaming media delivery. Attendees will get a solid understanding of underlying technologies that can be applied to any streaming media implementation. Whether you're implementing an internal corporate communications system or want to know how to spice up your web site with audio and video, this session gives you the tools you'll need to start streaming. This workshop is suitable for novices, but assumes some familiarity with streaming media and standard Internet technologies.

Microsoft's Windows Media is possibly the most complete streaming media toolset available today. Windows Media provides interoperability across a wide variety of devices, which is essential when the streaming landscape encompasses PCs, handhelds, mobile phones, and high-definition TVs. Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies are gradually gaining trust with the major movie studios, and the next-generation DVDs are all slated to support Microsoft's video codecs. This workshop begins with a panoramic view of the Windows Media tools, and then zooms in on how to do specific tasks such as multi-bitrate encoding, server setup and capacity planning, Web casting, and using the digital rights management tools. The workshop will be packed with lots of practical tips and techniques to satisfy a wide range of audience skill levels.

Hear how Citigroup is using streaming technology to publish and syndicate video content using rich media communications to Citigroup employees and customers worldwide. The services are embedded in numerous Web properties, while the publishing
process is completely automated to target specific groups depending on the content. Tony has nearly 20 years of experience in the
planning, management, design, and deployment of enterprise technology and has led infrastructure efforts at Citigroup, driving next generation voice technology, global satellite broadcast capabilities, and enterprisewide content delivery networks.

This session will give attendees an understanding of how streaming media is being deployed for both education and marketing in academic settings. Understand the costs and some of the technology options available to schools today. Learn how streaming media tools used by students and faculty can impact people, places, and organizations far from campus. Take away pointers on how to replicate success and ideas for adapting streaming to your organization’s specific situation.

As more consumer devices and media make the transition from analog to digital, the protection needs of content owners; service providers, device manufacturers, and consumers are clashing and conflicting. To examine these divergent needs, the industry must answer some key questions, such as what are the business models pursued by various proponents? What are the technology solutions? How much do those solutions cost? How big is the market today? How big will it be in 3 years?

Streaming video has become a mission-critical tool for many schools, corporations, and government agencies. Learn how several organizations have implemented video-over-IP solutions to enhance learning, increase productivity, and create a safer environment. This session will cover video compression, IP network design, and real-world streaming applications.

The wide choice of compression formats and codecs makes it difficult to find real-world examples of the video and audio quality and end-user experience offered by the different platforms. Join master compressionist Ben Waggoner in a live demonstration of today's standard, new, and in-development codecs, formats, and players, including WMV, RealMedia, MPEG-4, and AVC/H.264. At the end of this session, you'll have a much better idea how to pick the right format for the right project.

This session will address the current landscape of digital distribution of games and entertainment by broadband service providers. Hear an overview of delivery models and benefits to participants, and an explanation of different models that allow consumer to play, rent, and purchase games, movies, and music. Listen to the panel discuss which models are most appropriate for the streaming market.

Video conferencing and streaming media continue to converge, but barriers still remain. This session looks at the ways in which streaming and videoconferencing work together, some of the obstacles to further synergy, how to overcome them, and the top videoconferencing solutions coming in 2005.

Our global economy depends on the sanctity of intellectual property and patents. Yet the digitization of content and new models of digital distribution of our intellectual assets, both authorized and unauthorized, present profound challenges to companies whose livelihood depends on these assets. In response to these challenges, an array of legal, technological, economic, and design strategies has been proposed, debated, and unleashed. Listen to our experts discuss what they think as well as hear the latest updates on current technology patent infringement cases such as Acacia Technologies.

With the increasing popularity of live webcasts, it is essential for webcasters and content creators to understand the intricate steps required to produce a successful live event. From signal acquisition through encoding to server distribution, this practical session details best practices for delivering a live Internet webcast. Discover how to take a complex and rich live event and deconstruct it to its elemental parts, from hardware and software to the workflow and signal flow of the production.

USATODAY.com's use of rich media for visual storytelling experiences by combining audio, video, photo, and graphics has delivered a new kind of journalism. See samples of the work and learn how they managed the technological production and distribution hurdles in creating these dynamic presentations for an online news site.

Getting information to your employees at the right time, using the right media is becoming more complex. Streaming media has been a good choice for the enterprise for several years, but has just recently become stable enough to allow for easy setup of streaming programming. Eric Hards will discuss the development and production of the Lockheed Martin’s IT Vision Channel. He will cover the products chosen and why, how they are integrated, and the creation of content. Attendees will learn what is needed to start a streaming media channel, how to use existing tools to accomplish this, and how to put together a business case to get management approval.

Video has been touted as the answer to service provider revenue challenges—allowing them to offer the “triple play” of bundled services: voice, data, and video. However, before offering interactive video services they first need the infrastructure to encode, ingest, manage, distribute, and deliver video assets—and manage and bill subscribers. A solution must intelligently distribute all types of content while interfacing with legacy applications for billing and CRM. This session discusses industry challenges for broadcasters, content providers, and service providers, open-architecture platform benefits, the evolution in interactive video services, and customer successes.

Get a practical demonstration of tools, tips, techniques, and best practices for creating corporate communication streaming apps on a tight budget. Learn the processes involved in an interactive streaming application integrated with Media Player control interfaces, scripts for page flips, markers for chapterization, closed captioning, and transparent field for text and links. Learn how to capture from FireWire, fix low audio and dim video, edit, output, encode, integrate, test, and publish. Find out how to cut your post-production time in half and how to tweak the best quality into your encodings with intelligent bit-rates using "profiles" for easy standardization.

What is needed to have a successful revenue model for digital music entertainment? Is a subscription or utility model necessary for revenue generation and profitability? Are the costs too high to support a streaming music site without other revenue sources? How will digital entertainment change the current structure of the music industry and what role will the big labels have? Experts from the trenches will help you answer these and other questions in this thought-provoking session about digital music on the Internet.

The multimedia section of the New Jersey Office of Information Technology has developed several extremely successful and creative media-enhanced sites. This session addresses the complex operation of designing and constructing a streaming media-enhanced site. Topics include development meetings, site specifications and design, memos of understanding between the client and provider, establishing video shooting schedules, on-site protocols, editing, encoding, and content management, and presentation, plus maintenance, monitoring, and enhancements following the project completion.

Hear Alex Feldman talk about how the State Department is using streaming technology to communicate America’s message around the world. While still in its early days, streaming is catching on as an important medium to reach key global audiences effectively across dozens of time zones. The department is also using streaming media to communicate to an internal audience spread literally around the world. Alex joined the State Department after founding one of Asia’s first Webcasting companies, B2Bcast.com, in early 2000 and running international operations for CCBN from London after that. He also pioneered CNBC Asia’s venture into streaming media, negotiating deals in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Australia.

Leading publishers are rushing to cash in on the explosion of broadband connectivity. From simple pre-roll video ads to complex and engaging interactive environments, companies are varying widely in investment, sales, and operational approaches to monetizing video content. Not to be outdone, advertisers are looking for cutting-edge reporting and measurement on their in-stream media buys, stretching the current business systems to the limit. Where is the market going and how are we going to get there?

From webcasts of product launches to the delivery of on-demand product brochures and video e-mail, webcasting can expand a company's brand beyond traditional outlets. For marketing executives who are considering using webcasting, this session explores how webcasts can be used as a marketing tool and addresses fundamental expectations viewers will have for webcasts that are produced by corporate marketers.

Industry observers have realized that although satellite radio gets more press, Internet radio has a larger audience, a faster rate of growth, and probably a better long-term future. This panel will explore several factors that are coming together that could make 2005 the year that Internet radio comes of age, such as innovative programming choices, reliable audience estimates, CARP reform, decreasing bandwidth costs, effective sales representation firms, significant marketing efforts, and increased advertiser interest.

Many companies are migrating Web sites to rich media, and no platform is more widely used than Macromedia Flash. Traditionally a progressive download format, new developments now allow for the potential of mass distribution of streaming. This Flash expert will take the audience through a step-by-step, how-to plan for a successful Web site redesign using Flash. Attendees will get a good understanding of real-world best practices for encoding FLV files, ActionScript 2.0, and infrastructure design.

MPEG-4 has long promised to do for video on the Internet what MP3 did for audio ... standardize delivery, make playback easy and players interchangeable. But synchronized video and audio has proved more challenging than audio alone, video quality hasn't been up to what the proprietary formats can achieve and adoption is going slowly. Will the new H.264, also know as Advanced Video Coding (AVC), change all that? Join us while we delve into the fascinating technical and business issues and try to explain what it all means to content providers.

SCCtv, Seattle Community Colleges Television, has put streaming video for distance learning into practice with IRIS, its Internet Resource Instructional System. Learn how SCCtv's live video streaming, video-on demand, and interactive television via IP capabilities have developed with the support of Microsoft, Dell Computers, Hitachi Data Systems and Cisco Systems. IRIS is also available to other colleges, universities and public schools systems to help them leverage a lack of bandwidth and dollars for an affordable streaming distribution system.

Indexing and chapterizing video to make it easily searchable can make it much more valuable and effective for the consumer. With the recent launch of searchable video services by major portals and the deals being made with big media properties to index streaming and downloadable entertainment, video searching is quickly becoming available to the consumer. Learn how these search services work and how you can leverage them for your content.

This session outlines the dramatic changes and resulting business opportunities in delivering continuing medical education (CME) to practicing physicians due to the widespread availability of new technologies and Internet access. This case study demonstrates the value of using the Web for CME for physicians and the resulting improvement in the overall health of the public in the U.S. (their patients), using an evaluation model and metrics developed and implemented at the Ohio State University Medical Center.

The world of content distribution and delivery can be extremely confusing for many content owners and providers. Who are the players and how do they line up in the vendor value chain? What are the alternatives for delivery and what services do you need for your content? Are there quality of service standards that you should be aware of? This session examines the landscape of digital media delivery and distribution and gives you the know-how to effectively choose the vendors and services to fit your needs.

Trying to get a handle on just how much to pay for streaming services is more than just a little difficult. This report based on studies and surveys conducted by StreamingMedia.com helps attendees get a clear understanding of what they should expect to pay for various services so they can get the most streaming bang for their buck. This session previews the forthcoming 3rd edition of the "Cost of Streaming Services Report," which will be published by StreamingMedia.com in 2005.

Significant technological advancements will soon allow us to view and interact with rich media entertainment on our phones, PDAs, wireless and portable devices. Where is wireless streaming, podcasting, and video blogging technology today and what is the outlook for the next few years? What are the growth drivers and restrictors and how will it affect you? This panel features speakers from companies that are leading the way into wireless streaming. They will share some honest insights into what’s happening now and talk where they are headed in the next few years.