Anyone have any suggestions on how I can transfer raw (3.5m/sec MiniDV) avi over the web. As a news stringer, I want to be able to feed to TV stations over the web (not live but real time) using a high speed DSL (400m/sec) internet connection. I'm not up to speed on web transfer restrictions/bottlenecks and wonder if this is a possibility. Right now I have to either drive a tape two hrs or put it on a plane with a schedule not conducive to time sensitive info. So... Can this be done? If so, is there unique hardware/software I and they will need? (they have as a minimum, T1 lines) Is a 400m/sec transfer rate acheivable and sustainable? Thanks in advance for any info.

DSL at 400 mbps? I suspect it's really 400 kbps. DV is 25 mbps, so you'll need something a bit faster. Expect to pay a LOT of money for a 25 mbps connection. You'd be better off compressing to MPEG-2 at 5 or 6 mbps, which is still a few times faster than most cable modems, and doing it non-realtime. Unless you're sending continuously, what's the problem with non-realtime? A 5-minute piece will transfer in less than half an hour at 1 mbps (cable modem speed). You'll need MPEG-2 encoding hardware in a computer that can take Firewire in from your DV camera and write an MPEG-2 file, and file transfer software to send it, and support on your target's server to receive the file, such as FTP. Or, get a T1 line installed at your location if you really need realtime.
///d@

Dennis is correct. Unless your doing this everyday, real time is too expensive to be feasible. If the station is footing the bill, a T1 line would possibly do it. If your footing the bill, I think you'll find the cost will make real time prohibitive.

Yea, I didn't have the T1/T2/OC3 bitrates in front of me. I'm a video guy, not a network guy! You'd want to check these out before ordering, of course. :-)
///d@

Go talk to Telestream if you want to do this. I think they can help as long as you have the $

Whoops, I should have said 4 meg/sec DSL (Don't we all wish we had 400 m/sec!). I'm wondering why if I have that connection speed, why I can't send the 3.5 meg/sec avi from my firewire imported MiniDV camera. Wish I knew more about this topic but... Would I need to upload it to a site and then have them download or is there a way to "stream?" it directly to them?

If not to all of the above, Is there a best mpeg format to compress to?

Anything that saves me driving 2 hrs each way is worth a shot. It's even better if I can deliver more quickly than the drive.

Thanks for your help.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Wilson : I'm wondering why if I have that connection speed, why I can't send the 3.5 meg/sec avi from my firewire imported MiniDV camera. -->>>

Because modem speeds are measured in megabits, and your camera's DV stream is 3.5 megabytes. Convert 4 megabits into megabytes, and you get 0.5 MB/sec, nowhere near fast enough for DV transfer.

I have exactly the same problem. In fact, I posted almost this exact same message several months ago.

Unfortunately, I've found no solution. Worse, in my case, I have dial-up Internet service.

There's gotta be a way. I have to drive tape 3 hours (each way)to Denver. Sometimes Fox will have a courrier meet me half way. If weather permits and the story's hot enough, they'll send the helicopter up here to get the tape, or they'll send a satellite truck (if they plan on doing a live remote) and I can dump my footage to them; but when they do that they almost always send one of their own shooters with it.

And sometimes I just put it on the bus. But I have the same problem as you in terms of dealing with schedules.

In larger metropolitan areas their are means of doing it, but the cost is prohibitive. In your case Charles, you may be in too remote a location. But the cost is a big factor. Companies won't just rent the line for 30 seconds. They have minimum fees and the costs get quite high. Except for the time factor, it's cheaper to drive it.

T3 is what is required for full motion video. Rates are in the range of $8,000 to $24,000 a month. Not something your likely to have installed in your home. It's beyond the scope of most companies needs or budgets.

T3 and OC3 are direct connections to the internet backbone. Rates I've seen are in the range of several hundred dollars per minute for the usage your talking. I think your best bet will be to try and find a large company in your area with this type of connection and work out an arrangement.

You would need to have the material on a laptop. The laptop will need an ethernet connection, preferably gigabit ethernet. Your material would be loaded off to their servers then sent via the T3 connection to your client's server. The client then transfers the data over their network and edits the material for broadcast. It can be done, but I can't see anyone being willing to do all that for less than a couple of hundred bucks.

<I think your best bet will be to try and find a large company in your area with this type of connection and work out an arrangement. >

Large company? I don't think we have one of those around here... unless you count the Wal-Mart store.

There are only three traffic lights in our entire county.

There are microwave towers between here and Denver. But getting the government users and/or phone company to let me use them to send in my stories isn't likely.

On the up-side: It's downhill all the way to Denver from here (we're at 8,500' elevation). The drive home's a bitch, however.

I work for an NBC affiliate. All of our network video comes over a computer using MPEG streams. Find out what they can take. Odds are you will be dealing with the art/Promotions deppartment as they are the ones who would be able to decode the mpeg stream for broadcast.

for those in "not so big areas"... check with your utility company... this is happening ALOT now>>>

dsl/cable providers don't think it's worth it to develop in certain areas, and what happens is that it's usually the local utility somehow comes up with a highspeed service.... and it's FREE... probably not for long. i don't know why they do it for free, but probably to get people hooked, then end up charging them later
(simple business)

this happens in most states you can think of where the town doe'sn't have enough draw for big companies, but enough people to warrant a development.

the better news than free? the highspeed you will be getting is the HIGHEST SPEED.... (in most cases) ... it whoops the hell out of t1/sdsl/cable ... and it's high upstream AND downstream... it's no joke

(maybe people that have this setup will comment otherwise, but the vast majortiy adhers to the above information)


....other than that, just search around for satellite/wireless no latency/high up/down... majority of all satellite is the suckiest thing on earth, the other stuff makes you wanna drool........

i live right next to a tiny ass pocket of 10mbps (1 megabyte per second) wireless provider.... no joke, when i move, i plan to move to their service area.....

if you're lucky enough to live in an area like above, just make sure you get informaton on transfer limits/caps/speed guarantees and the plan you can pay where you don''t have to adhere to them if available

oh yes, that local provider i'm out of the reach of, they give you:
cell phone
cable tv
1 MEGABYTE/sec (10mbs) internet
for $130/month
(current members are in a contract where they only pay $100/month for life)

the internet by itself is $45.....

Keep in mind that even if you could get a 25 mbps line (which I
doubt) or a 4 mbit line (for MPEG2) you will NEVER EVER get this
transfer speed [gauranteed, without hiccups) over the [current]
internet. No way. Yes, I've seen people download at 4+ MB/s
(yes megabytes per second) but it is a different thing if you
absolutely need this to work RELIABLY!!

Why do you think the quality of the movies coming [realtime]
from Iraq where so low quality/resolution? Because of the needed
datarate.

Also I think most TV stations use sattelite connections for realtime
stuff (if possible).

MPEG2 would still be better then DV, although compressing it
realtime and having the infrastructure to send and receive it
will be quite expensive as well.

Usually the TV stations (larger ones at least) have infrastructures
already in place to handle such situations. Perhaps best to
inquire there?

... you can get guarantees, but you have to make sure you do, and if it's available in the first place, like rob said, alot of times not guaranteed.... this first hand though, this 1megabyte/sec provided gives that speed

as far as from the movies from iraq.... could only come up with one thing.... they either:
1) are doing it on purpose to give that 'its so far and live effect", because they think it's cool or gives some subliminal feeling to the presentation
or
2) they don't know what they hell they are doing

do believe it is #1, because did see feeds that looked like regular television and not a $10 webcam, and they said it was live

people in us wouldn't know if they were receiving delayed feed, or live anyway, because there source depends on the news

Much of the coverage was from video phones and not satellite uplinks. Video phones have reduced data rates and if you do a search you'll find several discussions about the war coverage and the video phones used by some of the networks and the embedded journalists.

I believe the ATI radeon all-in-wonder will encode MPEG2 in real-time. However, I believe divX is much better for compressing video. Internet pirates use it all the time to compress 2 hour movies into a 700-800MB download. Of course, they use 2-pass VBR encoding which takes a long time. If your computer is fast enough, it can encode full resolution divX in real-time (you need a pentium 3.2 or an overclocked system or something). Then you have to send this over the internet (doable) and the other side will have to transcode (maybe they can play the divX movie and spit out analog, or use rad video tools which is free). Encoding is always a tradeoff between quality/size/time, but you can get pretty good results. Movies on Kazaa have about a 160:1 compression ratio, while DV is 5:1. You will get very very good quality with 2000kbps constant bit rate encoding (CBR = doable in real time). That's 250kB/s. I forget how sound factors into this, but sound compression is amazing nowadays. You can compress 20:1 virtually lossless.

Otherwise, hire someone to be a runner. That might be faster if you're trying to do 1 or 2 hours.