We all have mobile devices, and video streaming into them. You might even be planning to make a successful business out of this technology that is experiencing immense development, presently. The reason why you are reading this right now, too. Before you form your company – or format a strategy to take your company higher, for that matter – here is the information on video streaming to mobile devices that can give your business and fortunes a quicker, greater, and surer ascent.

In the mobile networks of current times, the video streaming to mobile devices supports high quality video. The rate of data transmission, in many cases, to local area coverage can be up to 2Mbps, or more. In the case of wide area coverage, it can be up to 384 Kbps, or more.

An important thing for you to know, early on, would be what the possible problems related to Mobile Streaming are:

• Bandwidth location dependency
• Low bandwidth
• Fluctuation of bandwidth with time
• Limitation of battery life
• Content protection
• High rate of errors
• Access to network
• Terminal heterogeneity

In the case of fluctuation of bandwidth with time, the requirement is of Dynamic Adaptation.

As for the terminal heterogeneity, the reason for that are the various mobile terminals that have different

• Maximum link speeds
• Display sizes

and

• Capabilities.

The heterogeneity problem, however, can be handled – in one way – by bringing into use some reliable capability exchange mechanisms which enable media streaming servers to work out the user preferences and network capabilities with mobile terminals. When this approach is adopted, the server streaming the video can send media that is adapted to the mobile terminal and the network of the client.

Example: Clients receiving the service of the WCDMA network can receive media at a bit rate higher than the one of clients who subscribe to the service of the GSM networks.

In case of a mobile terminal client using headphones of a high quality (and not a low-quality speaker), the transmission can get upgraded to a high-quality audio stream, owing to a dynamic capability exchange.

Assorted radio-access networks having diverse transmission conditions produce different link speeds, or bandwidth. Media streams can be delivered efficiently only if the distinct characteristics – for example, delays caused by the retransmissions of corrupted data packets -- of the wireless links are incorporated by the media transport protocols. Optimizing the transport of data over the wireless links, and using proxies for caching the data packets can be the solution to this issue.

In order to video stream, the audio and video data that have to be streamed to a mobile handset need to be arranged in a certain, correct format.

Video can be encoded with video codecs like

• MPEG-4
• H.263
• H.264

and likewise, audio codecs like

• AAC-LC
• HE-AAC v1
• HE-AAC v2
• AMR-WB
• AMR-WB+
• AMR-NB

can encode audio streams.

Several Protocols are used in Mobile Communication for streaming Audio and Video:

• For setting up and controlling a session – RTSP (Real-time Streaming Protocol) and SDP (Session Description Protocol)
• For the description of session layout – SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)
• For the transportation of static media like texts, images, and session layouts – HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)
• For the transportation of real time media like speech, audio, and video – RTP (Real-time Transfer Protocol).

There is, of course, more to video streaming to mobile devices, and you are most welcome to avail a free consultation with us at Ascentspark Software to know what you want to, on the subject.

You can also get in touch with us for completely customized solutions related to video streaming, delivery, and monetization.