Multimedia is a mixture of any of a number
of elements such as sound, text, graphics, video and animation.
Streaming media technology encodes multimedia clips into small
chunks of data which is sent via the Internet to the viewer's
machine. Once the initial few seconds of the clip are downloaded
the media player starts to run the clip whilst still downloading
and buffering the next section due to be viewed.
This means that you can actually watch the first part of the clip
while the rest is still downloading - hence 'streaming media'.
The big bonus here is in terms of being able to provide much richer
and more engaging forms of web content without the obstacle of your
viewers needing high speed connections. Everyone - even those on low
speed dial-ups can see steaming media effectively.
The possible uses are limitless - consider the following:
training clips for products and services, promotional movies about
your organisation, sales presentations, interviews, in fact anything
that can be recorded in a digital video format.
