Table of Contents:

Definition and Overview

1. Preproduction Concepts for Audio and Video

2. Acquiring the Media

3. Editing

4. Preprocess for Streaming

5. Watermarking

6. Designing the Rich Media Presentation

7. Serving and Delivering the Media

8. The Final Step

Self-Test

Glossary

PDF of this tutorial

Before the production is saved in a format suitable for streaming, a process known as encoding, another opportunity for further enhancing the content is provided.

Audio

• volume—The volume of certain portions of the audio may need to be adjusted so that the volume of the presentation is consistent.
• equalization (EQ)—In some cases, the EQ may require adjustment. With EQ, various frequency ranges may be boosted or cut in the same way that the treble and bass on a stereo are adjusted.
• normalization—The process of normalizing the audio will maximize the volume without causing distortion, providing the best possible signal for encoding.
• compression—Compression may also be applied to even out the dynamic range of the audio, making for a more consistent presentation of the audio.
• resampling—At this point, the file may need to be sampled at a lower sampling rate. This will produce a smaller file size.

All of these adjustments will give the audio portion of a presentation a more professional sound.

Video

Various adjustments can be made to the video portion of the content before encoding to guarantee a more professional look and more efficient file size.

• brightness—Brightness controls the overall luminance value and can sometimes be used to add clarity to the picture.
• contrast—Adjusting the contrast will increase or decrease the range of difference between the darkest and lightest portions of the picture and can be used to add clarity to the picture or add a special effect.
• black and white restore—Black restore clamps all near-black values to pure black. White restore is similar in that it clamps near-white values to pure white without affecting the rest of the image. The main use of these two functions is to clear up video noise. Noise is the term used for random distortions of the luminance and chrominance. Black and white restore enable better compression of the solid black and white areas of the video.
• median blur—This removes sharp changes in the image, thus enabling better compression.
• the National Television Standards Committee/phase alternate line (NTSC/PAL) deinterlace—The U.S. standard (NTSC) and the European standard (PAL) video format deliver the video in an interlaced fashion. Each frame is broken down into two fields: odd and even. These are delivered separately, each taking about one-sixtieth of a second. This video method is referred to as interlacing. The deinterlace function combines the odd and even fields of the video to make progressive-scan video. Progressive scan delivers entire frames sequentially and is the process used by computers.
• pixel aspect ratio—This converts nonsquare pixel formats to square so that the video will show properly on the monitor.
• key frames creation—This forces high-quality frames at the marker. A key frame is a complete frame containing all of the information. Subsequent frames will be based on this information.
• cropping—This enlarges the selected area to fill the entire frame.