Media server solutions

For our media server solution we had four basic requirements:

1. It had to be possible to play back only addressable segments of video and/or audio files from the server to the client. Scenarios were complete media files are copied to the client were not acceptable. These include HTTP based solutions that use 'progressive download'.
2. Incoming media streams should be accessible from the Java Media Framework (JMF).
3. Start of playback should be possible while media data is being downloaded.
4. Video quality should be comparable the MPEG-1 video. Audio quality should be at least 22 KHz, 16 bit mono.

Several alternative technologies were tested with JMF. The most successful ones were based on WebNFS and on RMI. For the current demo version the RMI solution is chosen because it is the most widely accessible one.

The WebNFS solution was  tested across  Dutch scientific network. In these tests  MPEG-coded video could be tranmitted seamlessly to the clients. Tests to access the Institutešs servers from for example Munich were not successful. The many hops, delays, and bandwidth bottlenecks made the direct streaming of video impossible. We expect that the national network situations will change dramatically within the coming two years with an improved international connectivity, making the use of  EUDICO from clients at another scientific institutions somewhere in Europe possible.