Creating Streaming Content
Below is an overview of the streaming content creation process. For detailed instructions, see the applicable Eureka documents. For general information about streaming media, see the Overview and benefits section below. The documents linked below provide the approved tools, a tools comparison matrix, detailed steps and settings to create streaming content while meeting company publishing standards. They will be updated periodically as new tools and techniques are added.
Determine which tool to use. Some of these tools are free, and the others must be purchased. Consider the type of media you'd like to create and how users will be accessing the media. See Eureka! document 18296 — Determining which tool to use for more information.
Make sure that your machine meets the hardware requirements and that you have the necessary software and/or equipment. See the following Eureka documents for more information:
Following the standards for creating streaming content, create your streaming content and convert it to low bandwidth to ensure that all users can play it. See the following Eureka documents for more information:
If you are interested in creating full motion video, see the Creating full motion video section below.
Submit your recording for publication. See Eureka! document 18298 — Submitting streaming content for publication for detailed instructions.
Reports are available to help you track usage of published streaming content. See the Streaming content reports section below for more information.
For additional information about streaming media, including viewing streaming content or troubleshooting, see the list of Eureka documents for Streaming Media.
Streaming media can be as basic as an audio message, or it can be a more sophisticated “blended” presentation with graphics, Flash animation, video, and interactivity for training and sales presentations. Below are some possible uses for on-demand streaming content:
All employees can quickly and easily create their own content for their daily communications and training needs. With the exception of full-motion video, employees can now create on-demand streaming without: expensive equipment, lots of resources, and multimedia expertise.
Other than full-motion video, employees can create streaming content themselves or outsource this to vendors as long as they follow corporate standards for bandwidth size and codecs as detailed in Eureka! document 18288 – Streaming Media Standards. These standards are set by IT so the content gets to the most people with the fewest problems, best performance, and minimal impact on the network resources. The standards give options for both low and high-bandwidth content. For more information on high and low bandwidth, see the Bandwidth section of Eureka! document 18286 — Streaming Media FAQs. Employees who have questions about standards and/or suggestions for upgrades should contact the IT Collaboration & Web Engineering team.
The Streaming Media Service provides the infrastructure, standards, processes, support, and basic tools that ensure a level of service that users can depend on. Streaming technology like Windows Streaming Media helps PeopleSoft manage resources and costs that traditional “download-and-play” solutions (e.g., PowerPoints or .avi video) don’t. Additionally, streaming technology provides inherent security features that downloaded content doesn’t.
There are various proprietary technologies in the multimedia world. These technologies, while similar, are often times not compatible with one another. In order to ensure the highest quality streaming content and to ensure that the greatest number of users have access to the content with the fewest problems, only certain tested and approved configurations will be used. Information Technology has standardized on Microsoft’s Windows Media Technology for distributing streaming content internally. This technology encompasses the player and server components as well as the compression/decompression algorithms (codecs).
Streaming content must adhere to the standards or it will not be published. Employees creating on-demand content should refer to Eureka! document 18288 – Streaming Media Standards. Vendors contracted by employees to create on-demand content should use Eureka! document 18289 – Streaming Media Standards for Vendors.
Questions or problems with any of the standards (codecs, bandwidth parameters, streaming technology, tool selection, tool settings) should be addressed to the IT Collaboration & Web Engineering team.
Benefits of using streaming media
The technology of streaming differs from conventional downloading (like downloading an .avi video or a self-extracting file) in several ways:
For PeopleSoft, streaming’s reduced demand on the network bandwidth means that greater numbers of presentations can be delivered to many more people than in the conventional way. It also saves a lot of cost on network upgrades. From a user’s standpoint, it means that it doesn’t take up disk space on a PC that might normally require megabytes and even gigabytes of storage, and it can save users a lot of download time, and it enables them to control the versioning of their content by managing it from a central location.
One potential disadvantage for some users is that streaming content can’t be saved locally on a user’s machine. Users must be connected to the network to receive the stream. However, this can also be advantageous for security purposes.
PeopleSoft has invested money and resources in the streaming network and processes supporting it because of significant cost savings to the company, and because currently it’s the quickest, most efficient technology to deliver mixed-media content to the largest number of internal audiences. Although on-demand streaming doesn’t make sense in every situation, for many multimedia needs it’s the most efficient way to communicate and should be considered before other forms of multimedia delivery.
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Full-motion video (“talking head video”) requires equipment and expertise beyond the capabilities of most departments and therefore must be outsourced. Employees have the option of outsourcing to an external media vendor, or they can contact Marketing for help with finding a vendor. All vendors must adhere to the company standards as detailed in the Streaming Media Standards for Vendors. Scenarios can range from simply renting a camcorder, capturing an informal brown bag, and converting it to the streaming format to hiring sound and lighting technicians, editing services, and inserting slides shots for a formal departmental presentation or training session.
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There are two types of reports:
Standard - The standard report contains information about the utilization of the entire streaming service, from its inception to present day. These reports are meant for service managers, specifically IT management.
Custom - The custom reports contain information specific to a particular piece of content for a specific time period. These reports are meant for content owners and Planet community owners.
There are two types of custom reports: long-term and short-term. Users can request Web-based access to long-term reports if they need to track on-going usage (typically for a program rather than one item). Please contact IT Collaboration & Web Engineering concerning this.
The short-term reports are single timeframe reports manually generated by the Collaboration & Web Engineering team. There is a 48-hour turnaround from end of day on the day of submission. The information is provided back to the customer in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. To request short-term custom reports, email CWE-Streaming.
The following information is required to request for short-term reporting:
The short-term report will provide the following information:
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Created by the PeopleSoft Knowledge Management Team.
Copyright © 2004
All rights reserved.
Created: jw 04/27/2004
Revised: jw 06/02/2004