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PNW Section Visits RealNetworks - Audio and Video over the Internet


November 6, 1997
Color video captures (6 each 240x180 JPEGs, about 10KB each)
Report by Gary Louie

The PNW section met November 6, 1997 at RealNetworks (formerly Progressive Networks) in downtown Seattle. Over 40 attendees gathered in the 4th floor "rec room" (along with a pool table and ping-pong table) to hear about streaming audio and video over the Internet.

Section chair David Scheirman opened by asking for a show of hands from members, then nonmembers. He then introduced the PNW officers and committee members in attendance.

PNW committeeperson Aurika Hays of RealNetworks gave a brief introduction to what RealNetworks does - stream audio and video over the Internet. Then David and Aurika awarded door prizes courtesy of RealNetworks - coffee mugs and T shirts.

Scheirman introduced Steve Mack, manager of the RealNetworks Media Lab. Steve gave his insights on working in a fast moving field, and the technology behind streaming media.

RealNetworks began with their own codecs for streaming audio over the Internet. Audio codecs are now licensed from Dolby and Sipro Lab Telecom. RealAudio sounds much better with every upgrade and is now available in stereo. Regarding stereo, Steve thought that the product managers want to tout the stereo aspect, but the engineers would rather have the bits used for better mono. Video was introduced with RealVideo 4, and improved with RealVideo 5, the current release. The video capability is currently limited to animation-style material.

Steve claimed that for going over the Internet, RealNetworks technology is more robust than something like MPEG. Video takes most of the bandwidth of a stream, so audio gets less bandwidth then ever. Fortunately, the new low bitrate codecs are a marked improvement over previous codecs and make it sound better. Steve stated that a good voice codec is different than a good music codec, which can be a problem. Video+synched audio is another problem. There is no standard for transmission such as SMPTE/NTSC over the Internet, so the technology must be invented.

Steve spoke about The Big View of what their company is doing: the Internet is the next mass medium. Big companies (and money) are moving in. He compared the acceptance of the Internet to the gradual acceptance of radio and TV. He did not think that it would replace these traditional media, just as TV did not replace radio. It is, however, an interesting new kind of communication. He cited the popularity of their KING-FM simulcast. The station is a popular Seattle classical music station, but over the Internet, it is very popular during office hours all over the country - people apparently like to play it in their offices over their computers. Steve also liked their liveconcerts.com chat room, saying that it was much less juvenile than the usual chat room and very friendly.

Demos were shown over their intranet, ensuring high speed connections. Steve used a Pentium 300 computer and several big monitors to do the demonstrations, although he said you did not need that horsepower to view the media. Demos included showing Southpark, a cartoon series on cable TV's Comedy Central, showing how cartoons looked at this very low bit rate. A question about authoring the animation resulted in Aurika's response that Macromedia Flash 2, plus some special authoring tools were primarily used. Artists must be conscious of bit rate limitations in their artwork.

Steve mentioned upcoming technology for higher bandwidth to your computer, such as ADSL cable modems. These allow a high download rate, but with a lower upload rate. Then you can start delivering video on demand at VHS quality. He also demonstrated their codec evolution. The audio quality gets much better with the same bit rate. They are always searching for better codecs, though.

Where's the money in this?? Steve felt that the direction seemed to be going to Pay Per View type programs or ads. RealNetworks server software can insert ads and authenticate individual users for PPV.

RMA (Real Media Architecture) is their next important technology. It allows any number of different media types to be streamed over the Internet. Demonstrations were shown of streamed multiple media: MIDI soundtracks, video, and tickertape text at the same time. There was a real estate catalog demo with music, dynamic photos of houses and text; a Bloomberg news "talking head" with picture, sound and info tickertape; and dynamic car ads with zooming photos, music and text.

Jake Soloman & Steve work daily on projects like liveconcerts.com. They netcast live concerts, and have a 202 GB archive of material from KCRW (Santa Monica). Another is Musicnet, which carries information on what's new in music with RealAudio clips.

Steve mentioned that they will be starting 7 Internet radio channels. The channels will be branded, but names can't be revealed yet. 500 songs would be needed for each channel, which means that 3500 songs will need to be encoded into various RealAudio formats. He got a CD "slurper" (allowing them to bypass the poor PC sound cards) that reads audio CDs at 20 times real-time speed. Sonic Foundry (the Sound Forge company) provided software to help automate the RealAudio encoding process. He would later mention that much of their work is the drudgery of encoding lots of material. The streaming part is then relatively easy.

David Scheirman then introduced Mary Truscott of The Recording Academy, commonly known as NARAS (the Grammy folks). She gave a quick overview of the Academy, which recently opened a Seattle office. Scheirman noted that interaction between groups like the Recording Academy, the Acoustical Society, and student groups was a good thing.

Refreshments were then provided, courtesy of RealNetworks, and lastly, groups went on tours. On the 5th floor was Broadcast Operations Center for RealNetworks, which streams the material around the Internet for clients. The stream is sent to a network of streamers around the country to divide up the load on the Internet. The room was likened to a radio station without the transmitter - this form of transmitting is done in their server room.

The 29th floor included the main offices, the server room (where standard Gateway-style PC computers do most of the serving), and the Media Lab with its studios and encoding labs. Steve noted the poor soundproofing - but a company move is likely scheduled for sometime next year for more space, and hopefully better audio facilities. The video area held a small interview studio and transfer and edit suites. Like the audio encoding, a computer "assembly line" lets workers transfer video, reduce it and encode it with relative efficiency.

Our thanks to RealNetworks for the presentation, prizes and refreshments, and Aurika, Steve and Jake.
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