Video on the World Wide Web
Accessing Video from WWW Browsers

Sverre H. Huseby

Abstract

This report discusses inclusion of various kinds of video in browser programs for the World Wide Web. It contains description of video representation formats, video transfer on the Internet in general, and mechanisms for extending Web browsers to support initially unknown media types.

A plug-in for Netscape Navigator, capable of displaying inline MPEG movies, is implemented, along with a Java applet for displaying live video captured from a camera connected to a remote computer. The plug-in and the applet show that making video available from Web browsers is indeed possible, and not considerably harder than making a stand-alone video handling program.

• Contents
• Introduction
• Video Representation and Compression
  • Sampling
  • Image and Video Compression
  • Single Image Compression
  • Exploiting Temporal Redundancy
  • Discussion
  • Summary
• Transferring Video on the Internet
  • Introduction to TCP/IP Networking
  • Multicasting and the MBone
  • Methods for General Data Transfer
  • Methods Related to Video Transfer
  • Summary
• Solutions for Embedding Video in WWW Browsers
  • Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
  • Browsers and Document Types
  • Spawning External Applications
  • Server Push and Client Pull
  • Animated GIFs
  • Extending Browser Source Code
  • Plug-ins
  • Java Applets
  • Discussion
  • Summary
• MPEG Plug-in for Netscape Navigator
  • Netscape Plug-in API
  • Choosing an MPEG Decoder
  • Tailoring mpeg_play
  • Discussion
  • Summary
• Sending Camera Input to a Java Applet
  • Network Communication
  • Video Handling
  • Java Applet Implementation
  • Discussion
  • Summary
• Conclusion
• Introduction to Data Compression
  • Basic Information Theory
  • Compression Algorithms
• SHHVid Java Applet Source Code
• SHHVid Grabber Source Code
• SHHVid Proxy Source Code
• Recoding MPEG to JPEG and GIF
• Internet Links
• References