Advanced Streaming Format

How will ASF spark the multimedia revolution?

To speak of an imminent revolution is to say that there is a widespread desire for change. Arming the peasants with pitchforks will not result in much if the peasants are more or less content. Arming content providers and hosting providers with an interoperable network multimedia infrastructure will make for a quiet day if they are not interested. However, they are interested.

Content providers are interested in deploying their content on the Internet and on corporate intranets. Established media companies rightly view these networks as the new frontier. To the television network giants, the Internet represents a universal vehicle for offering access to the mountains of video content generated over the decades. Indeed, this process is already starting. To the Hollywood studios, the Internet represents the opportunity to present movie trailers to anyone, anytime, anywhere. This is starting too.

Smaller content providers are also getting in on the action. To the intrepid independent reporter with a small pack of equipment, the Internet represents the means for getting out a live video story anytime, from anywhere, at negligible cost. To the hobbyist in his basement with a camcorder, the Internet represents the opportunity to get his video out on the world stage. Democracy is about to take another leap forward.

Put simply, the Internet provides a means for multimedia content providers of every stripe to take any or all of their content and throw it in front of everyone, right now, very inexpensively, and in a powerful way. There is no historical precedent for this kind of communicative power. This power will prove irresistible to content providers.

The desire of multimedia content providers to throw their content out onto the Internet is matched by and married to the desire of network infrastructure providers to provide value-added services over their networks. Internationally, the communications world is quickly blending into one big digital pot. Telecoms, local carriers, cable operators, and satellite providers are all starting to look similar in that they all move bits around. Basic telephone services are becoming a commodity business with narrow margins. What are needed are premium services.

Video and audio are premium services. They are valuable from an informational point of view. (In other words, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video may be worth a thousand pictures.) Moreover, video and audio consume a lot of bits. This is a good thing for businesses that charge by the bit, as the communications providers are already doing, or as they are soon likely to be doing.

So the peasants are restless. They were awakened by the older multimedia technologies such as AVI (see How does ASF relate to AVI?), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and QuickTime (see How does ASF relate to other older formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and QuickTime?). They have been whipped up into an angry mob by new multimedia streaming technologies such as VXF, RA, RMFF, and VIV (see How does ASF relate to newer formats such as VXF, RA, RMFF, and VIV?). Now, ASF is calling upon the peasants to reach for their pitchforks

As explained earlier (Why is the multimedia world demanding a standard file format like ASF?), ASF represents the biggest step toward achieving interoperability of media production tools, servers, and clients. Interoperability will greatly reduce the risk of choosing one vendor's product over another. In an interoperable world, if you are a content provider, simply grab the media production tool that provides you with the best value and get running with it, safe in the knowledge that all media servers can stream the resulting content, and that all clients can view it. If you are a hosting provider, deploy the media server that offers you the most value, safe in the knowledge that all content providers can upload to your media server, and that all clients can connect to it. If you are a content consumer, install the client that brings you the most value, and experience all the content that is out there.

ASF will bring us to the doorstep of interoperability. Interoperability will make risk-free, straightforward, and inexpensive the choice to create streaming media, to host streaming media, and to experience streaming media. As such, these choices will be made, and made often. So often, in fact, that it will be called the digital multimedia revolution.