Net Video: VDOLive

This column is the third of several installments that discuss video on the Net. This week I focus on VDOLive from VDOnet Corp. of Palo Alto, CA and Israel.

What is VDOLive?
VDOLive allows users to transmit video and audio over the Internet or any other TCP/IP network. It uses client/server architecture, the client being the VDOLive Player and the server being the VDOLive Server.

The VDOLive Player is a "helper application" compatible with several different browsers. VDOLive can also be viewed with a plug-in.

Running the VDOLive Player requires a 486 DX2 66 MHz or above, running MS Windows 3.1x with MS Video for Windows installed or Windows '95. (Windows '95 has Video for Windows built in.) It also requires a Web browser capable of viewing graphics, 8 MB RAM, a sound card, and a 14.4 Kbps or faster modem or LAN connection to the Internet.

What Makes VDOLive Unique?
VDOnet is the only Internet video provider to offer all three of the features desired by users: videoconferencing, live video, and video-on-demand. CU-SeeMe permits videoconferencing and live video but not video-on-demand; Xing StreamWorks lets you serve live video and up to 100 streams of video-on-demand, but does not permit two-way video.

Oren Ariel, Chief Technology Officer of VDOnet, says their products all are based on one core technology with two complementary features: wavelet compression and "scalablility" or bandwidth transmission control. Furthermore, these two features are aware of each other--meaning that the compression adjusts to the available bandwidth on the fly to supply the client with the best possible video stream.

StreamWorks' compression software is based on the industry standard MPEG-1. This approach enables producers to employ common TV industry compression tools and serve audio and video streams in several discrete bandwidths from 14.4 kbps up. They opt for high image quality and low frame rate when scaling down to lower bandwidths.

The VDOLive Server, on the other hand, serves one type of video data that is scaled by the Player to produce optimal quality video suitable to the user's connection. In cases of bandwidth as low as 14.4 Kbps, the scalability will result in a frame rate of approximately one frame each 1-3 seconds. In other cases the VDOLive Player and the VDOLive Server will try to converge at the best possible bandwidth, which may result in blurry display and/or low frame rate.

The real-time scalability of VDOLive streams is what VDOnet regards as its main advantage over other types of products. They emphasize that video created with VDOLive will be usable as bandwidth grows and will not need to be encoded again and again with each new incremental increase of modem speed or connectivity.

The two-way video capability will also have a significant effect on the types of program formats that are employed in "Webcasting." It's not hard to see how training and customer support functions may employ this technique, nor how how popular TV and radio formats like call-ins, game shows, and panel discussions could use two-way video. Even news programming could take on a whole new dimension if eyewitnesses to events could put themselves on camera from battlefields, disaster sites, or exclusive Hollywood parties.

Who's Using VDOLive?
The free VDOLive Player has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of users. VDOLive Servers are being used by a large number of high-profile video distributors including PBS, CBS News, and Paramount Digital Entertainment. VDOnet has also formed partnerships with publishers such as Ziff-Davis, Grolier, and Mecklermedia. Today 150 sites have VDOLive servers, with 70 of those currently up and running and the others developing content.

A popular new VDOnet product is the two-way videophone, or "VDOPhone," which has been downloaded by 10,000 users in its first month.

America Online (AOL) and VDOnet recently announced that AOL will license a version of the VDOPhone to be used in Virtual Places, AOL's new user-friendly environment for chat and community on the Web. The addition of the VDOPhone capability will allow all Virtual Places users to be able to talk to their correspondents. With additional enhancements--which will be available from VDOnet--users will also be able to have videophone conversations with each other.

"Virtual Places is designed to open up worlds of communication to users of the Net," said Udi Shapiro, president of the Ubique Ltd., an America Online company that developed Virtual Places. "The VDOPhone, with its Internet voice and video telephony capabilities, can dramatically enhance this experience by allowing participants of Virtual Places to talk to and see each other, if they choose to."

Jeff Pulver of Voice on the Net says, "The leading-edge technology which VDOLive represents offers the possiblity of delivering 15 frames per second at 28.8k. In practice, I'm happy if I can get 8-12 frames per second at 28.8k--but nonetheless, it is a pretty impressive demonstration of technology."

Pulver feels the biggest contribution VDOLive has brought to the Net is the ablity to provide high-quality streaming video at low bandwidths. "Xing," he says, "has been providing high-quality video streams since the past fall--but generally speaking their video streams appear better at their higher end bandwidth settings." Prices
VDOLive Server comes in a range of prices depending on the number of streams you want to offer. As you can see, anyone with a Net connection can get into the TV business for a relatively small investment--and you can get your feet wet with the Personal Server, which gives you two streams of one-minute duration for free.

Product	Concurrent Video Streams Supported	Price (US$)	Basic Support
VDOLive Player	NA	FREE	NA
VDOLive Personal Server	2 (one minute in length)	FREE	NA
VDOLive Server	5	$1,199	$360
VDOLive Server	10	$1,995	$599
VDOLive Server	50	$6,450	$1,935
VDOLive Server	100	$9,999	$2,999

What Lies Ahead?
PC Magazine, in its March 26, 1996 story Web TV Tunes In, bemoans the fact that Web video technology still has not progressed to the point that home-based users can regard it as much more than a novelty. They remind us though that creators of Net video products face very challenging problems:

Compressing television-quality video, whose original bandwidth is about 27 megabytes per second, to a usable 28.8 Kbps requires an astounding 7,500:1 compression ratio. Even with a small 160-by-120 video window, it takes a compression ratio of 470:1 to make a 28.8-Kbps connection workable.

The best hope for high-quality Net video is widespread cable modem access to the Net or at least cheap access to ISDN service. Still, VDOLive and other technologies give us reason to believe that video will become an important component of Web media, even though we are still enduring bandwidth growing pains.

However, this growing period might not be just a waystation enroute to the gigabit per second paradise. In the bandwidth flush future we may look back on this time as an era of great innovation when developers stretched compression technology and the infrastructure to its limit and developed products and techniques that made a lasting impact on television and all online media.

Past installments of Multimedia Web