Streaming media server design (with CD-ROM)

This book covers the fundamental issues and advanced techniques that underlie the design of modern, high-performance and large scale Continuous Media (CM) servers on various multi-disk platforms. CM continue to be some of the most demanding data types in many newly emerging applications. Those new applications include digital editing systems, digital libraries, corporate training networks, and entertainment databases (video-on-demand, interactive TV). In order to effectively support CM's large size and real-time-display functions, the design of streaming CM servers has to be quite different from that of traditional file or database systems. KEY TOPICS: The topics included are designed to teach system designers, multimedia applications engineers and other professionals the optimization techniques necessary to maximize the performance of these complex servers for the diversity inherent in CM applications. To illustrate this concept, the book features an accompanying CD complete with a working example of tutorial CM software to experience running a CM server hands-on. Streaming media, Web server, and video-on-demand designers and programmers will find this book to be extremely relevant and timely. It is also of great help to multimedia application developers and service performance analysts.

Preface. 1. Fundamentals of Streaming Media Systems. Introduction to Streaming Media Display. Streaming Media System Architecture. Data Compression. Delivery of Streaming Media over Internet. Outline of the Book. 2. Single Disk Platform SM Servers. Modern Disk Drives. Overview of SM Techniques. Disk Scheduling for SM Display. Constrained Data Placement. SM Display with Multi-zone Disks. 3. Multiple Disk Platform SM Servers. Overview. Cycle-based, Round-robin. Deadline-driven, Random. Optimization Techniques. Online Reconfiguration. Supporting Multi-zone Disks. 4. Deadline-Driven Scheduling & Unconstrained Data Placement. Hiccup Probability. A Taxonomy of Deadline-driven Approaches. Evaluation. Conclusions. 5. Heterogeneous Disk Platform SM Servers. Partitioning Techniques. Non-Partitioning Techniques. Techniques with Multi-zone Disk Drives. Conclusions. 6. Fault Tolerance Issues in SM Servers. Target Architecture. Overview of High Availability Techniques. High Availability for Heterogeneous Storage Systems. Basic Reliability Modelling. Simulation Results. Conclusions. 7. Hierarchical Storage Design For SM Servers. Overview of Tape Storage. Pipelining Technique. Data Placement Techniques. Conclusion. 8. Distributed SM Servers. Solutions for Distributed Streaming Applications. RedHi: A Typical Distributed Streaming Media Server. Conclusion and Future Work. 9. Super-Streaming. Two-Level Architecture (Client-Server Model). m-Level Architecture. Conclusion and Future Work. 10. YIMA Case Study. Introduction. System Architecture. Variable Bitrate Smoothing. Data Reorganization. Scalability Experiments. Conclusions. A: Personal Edition Single Disk SM Server Software. Introduction. YIMA PE Components. Server Installation and Operation. Client Installation and Operation. Media Preparation. B: Glossary. C: Exercises. Bibliography. Index.