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Online video streaming glossary

To help you understand the terminology behind video streaming, below is a list of terms used reguarly at Ant Media.


A

Term

Meaning

Ant Media Server

Ant Media's capable, extensive video/audio streaming platform

Ant Media Community Edition

The freely downloadable version of the Ant Media Server

Ant Media Enterprise Edition

The supported version of Ant Media Server, with several enhancements 

AAC

Advanced Audio Coding is a compression format, similar to MP3, that features increased sample frequency and offers a higher quality audio track for your live video.

Adaptive streaming

A methodology to stream multiple resolutions of your live video to accommodate viewers with varying degrees of network bandwidth or internet speed.

B

Term

Meaning

Bitrate

Bitrate is the way we measure the speed of the upload and download transfers. The faster the data transfers, the more overall data gets through

Buffering

Buffering is a delay prompted by the data preloading process.

C

Term

Meaning

Codec

A “codec” is an encoding/decoding standard for reducing the file sizes of video, audio, and other media formats. The most common video codec is H.264, and the most common audio codecs are AAC and MP3.

E

Term

Meaning

Encoder

An encoder is a piece of software (or potentially hardware) that encodes, meaning compresses, the RTMP stream

F

Term

Meaning

Frame rate

Frame rate (expressed in frames per second or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed

H

Term

Meaning

H.264

H.264 is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content, used by 91% of video industry developers as of September 2019.

HD

HD video refers to video that is at least 720 horizontal pixels by 480 vertical pixels in resolution. “Full HD” or 1080 HD video is 1920 x 1080 pixels in resolution.

I

Term

Meaning

Ingestion

Data ingestion is the process of importing a stream for storage of immediate use. It requires a database or storage to receive the information.

K

Term

Meaning

Keyframe

In video encoding, a keyframe stores the complete image of the scene.

L

Term

Meaning

Latency

Video latency refers to the degree of delay between the time a transfer of a video stream is requested and the actual time that transfer begins.

Live streaming

Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the Internet

Low latency

Video latency that can be described as between 500ms-1 seconds

O

Term

Meaning

OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is a free encoding software, designed to aid video recording and streaming.

R

Term

Meaning

Resolution

Resolution is the total number of pixels in a given video frame. The higher the number of pixels in a given frame, the better the quality of the video. So, when a video is said to have a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, it essentially means the video has a width of 3840 pixels and a height of 2160 pixels.

RTSP

RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) is a network control protocol created to control streaming media servers.

RTMP

Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) is a communication protocol for streaming audio, video, and data over the Internet.

S

Term

Meaning

Simulcasting

Simulcasting is a way of broadcasting a single live stream to multiple channels and content delivery platforms.

T

Term

Meaning

Transcoding

Transcoding is a digital-to-digital conversion of one type of encoded data (video or audio) to another

U

Term

Meaning

Ultra low latency

Ultra low latency describes a system that is optimized to process a very high volume of video packets with an extraordinarily low tolerance for delay (usually under 500ms).

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