[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       ms-wmtalk
Subject:    Re: min client for 320x240 lan delivery
From:       "Scott Harrison (Exchange)" <scotthar () EXCHANGE ! MICROSOFT ! COM>
Date:       1998-03-22 10:42:08
[Download RAW message or body]

If you encode 320X240 at about 300 - 500 kb/s using aobut 15fps you can get
a nice image that is capable of running full screen with 3.0 or run at 200%
300 kb/s(about what I would recomend if you want to do full screen or large
full motion video)  times 20 clients is 6000 kb/s about the max I would
suggest on a 10mb ethernet segment.  IF you use the 400 KBS that is 8000 kbs
and might work but how about some room for the other networking functions
such as the browsing and other stuff that is normally occuring on the wire.
60% (on the conservative side) or 70% is about all the volume you should
plan for on a segment for normal sustained traffic.  assuming you will have
all 20 clients going at the same time.

The key thing you want on the clients is a good video card , CPU and enough
ram, of which you mention below these are minimum requirement machines (as
in audio only or low rate small size video)and will likely not give you any
kind of decent results running the higher end content that you seem to
indicate you are looking for.

It is the frame size and the frame rate that are the most demanding.  You
could possible get by with a large window with a low frame rate or a small
window with a medium framerate. If you want a large window with a high frame
rate upgrade your client machines.  I would budget for 20 new pentiums the
fastest you can afford or if you are trying to save money upgrade the  video
cards, put another 16 mb of ram in those machines, and try to get a faster
processor in them.  Dono enough about the Main Board but you might be able
to stick a faster CPU in there if you can find them..  Intel at least is no
longer manufacturing anything less than a 233 clock chip from what I
understand.  Although I am sure there still plenty in the channel to go
around for now.

If you get new machines it is likely they will come with 100 mbit cards and
I would just go with a 100 meg FastEthernet that way you have some growing
room and you could seriously do TV size/quality on this setup.

Depending on your needs and what you are trying to do this is a perfect
secnario where you might consider Theater Server for your needs. It all
depends on how good do you want the end results to look. Not to say you cant
find an adequate solution using NetShow but if quality is paramount then
Theater server might be right for you.



-----Original Message-----
From: Khaled Ahmed [mailto:ahmed@MAIL.GULFNET.CO.JP]
Sent: Friday, March 20, 1998 6:22 PM
To: Netshow@DISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM
Subject: Re: min client for 320x240 lan delivery


At 04:40 PM 3/20/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I am trying to spend some money and could really use some help here. I am a
>long time user of NetShow but want to put it to a new use and I could use
>some input from other people who may have first hand experience. I want to
>setup a "Video Library" on my server and deliver it on demand (unicast) to
>a room with 20 Win95 workstations in it (room has its own hub and connects
>to separate NIC in server).
>
>My question is what client power do I need?
>
>I want a fairly good picture as students will be viewing material recorded
>from cable TV. I am thinking that 320x240 or 352x288 and perhaps doubled on
>the client end would work. Workstations are Win95 with 16MB Ram on
>Pentium100 using Cirrus5430PCI-Dram2MB video cards.
>The lan is 10baseT, only 20 clients, I am the only user so I can beat the
>hell out of it.
>
>Do I need to upgrade the clients?? Memory or Video card or CPU?
>How much of a trade off is there are far as client load when choosing
>different codecs?? ie, can I get away with a weaker client if I choose the
>right codec? How does doubling stream at client end compare to larger frame
>with more compression?
>
>Would I be better of just using Mpeg1 ?? and shared file??
>
>--
>Barron Mertens
>Department of Plant Sciences
>B&G Building, The University of Western Ontario
>London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B7
>

Hi Barron,

If you have 10-baseT LAN, each user can have about 400kbps, which is good
enough for 320x240. The number of frames/sec. depends on the contents type.
If you are going to buy the clients machines, you better off with MMX CPU
and 32 RAM. However, Pentium 100 with 16 will work.
Since all the contents will be on-demand, then you do not need a powerful
encoding machine if you do not mind the long compression time. If you do
not want to buy a powerful encoding machine, then you better compress the
contents using any video editing tool then use the VidToAsf to create *.ASF
file. Try to download some of the video compression products to judge the
quality of your contents after compression to 400 kbps. You can try Vivo
(http://www.vivo.com) which can compress and create *.asf in one step.
For on-demand contents, the power of the encoding machine will save you
time but the quality of the compressed contents will be the same.
If you fix the target bitrate and video size then the quality depend on the
contents type, used codec, KeyFrames. Try several codecs to see what is
best for your contents. I like MPEG4 but if you do not have MMX machines
you may not like it.  If you use anything less than PII for encoding, do
not ever think of live encoding in the future.

I hope this will help you

Khaled Ahmed

----------------------------------------------------------------
Users Guide http://www.microsoft.com/sitebuilder/resource/mailfaq.asp
contains important info including how to unsubscribe.  Save time, search
the archives at http://discuss.microsoft.com/archives/index.html

[Attachment #3 (application/ms-tnef)]
----------------------------------------------------------------
Users Guide http://www.microsoft.com/sitebuilder/resource/mailfaq.asp
contains important info including how to unsubscribe.  Save time, search
the archives at http://discuss.microsoft.com/archives/index.html


[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]