Delivering Live Mobile Video

Mobile video is a difficult subject, and mobile live video is even more difficult. The range of devices, networks and supported protocols are immense.

The first thing to do is to be pragmatic. Outside of very good 3G coverage, which is sparse, and 4G networks, which are rare outside of Asia and some American conurbations, WiFi and WiMax are really basic requirements for delivering any kind of reliable video to mobile devices.

Another basic problem with mobile phones is that they are, er..., mobile, and reliably handing over data services from cell to cell (or from one WiFI connection to the next) is a tough thing to do. So, the second things is to be stationary.

So, presuming you're standing still with a decent connection, the next thing to worry about is the device you're holding in your hand. If it's more than a couple of years old, and isn't a 'smartphone', then you should again probably give up. There is a very steep diminishing law of returns in trying to reach all mobile devices.

Older handsets primarily used the rtsp protocol and a format called 3GP, or H.263. The rtsp protocol isn't good at high data rates and the 3GP codec means you have to support yet another format. (You can stream H.264 over rtsp, but the devices often have no means of playing this back).

So, let's move back into the modern age.

Today there are five broad platforms you need to support:

• iOS - the Apple operating system used on iPads and iPhones
• Android - the wildly popular open source platform from Android
• Symbian - the underlying OS used by Nokia (and certain other manufacturers)
• Windows Mobile 9 - the Microsoft mobile OS used by a variety of manufacturers
• Blackberry OS - the platform for the eponymous devices favoured by businessmen and texters alike

Unfortunately, each one of these devices requires a slightly different approach for delivering live video, which ostensibly means taking a live feed or simulcast and encoding it into a number of formats and then delivering it over a number of different networks. Then comes the really tough bit - scaling the solution. Finally, there are the issues of detecting the device being used and providing a playout environment - a player, navigation and associated functions and applications such as voting, tweeting and sharing.

Over the coming weeks we're going to cover delivery to each of these device platforms, as well as looking at on demand delivery of video.