Windows Media banner art

Selecting an audience for video streams

The audiences provided in the list support common network settings. The Media Bit Rate is the amount of bandwidth consumed by your content; the Effective Bit Rate is the Media Bit Rate plus estimated stream overhead, which is calculated to allow for additional network traffic when content is being streamed. Select the target audiences that you want to support. You can select one or more audiences for each profile. Selecting multiple audiences creates a multiple-bit-rate profile.

If the stream will be a unicast transmission by a server running Microsoft Windows Media Services, using a multiple-bit-rate profile provides users with better quality content during times of network congestion. When you use a multiple-bit-rate profile, your video content is encoded at each bit rate that is in the profile. When Microsoft Windows Media Player receives a multiple-bit-rate stream, only the video stream that is the most appropriate for current network conditions plays. The Windows Media server and Windows Media Player handle the process of selecting the appropriate stream, which is invisible to the user.

The more bit rates you select, the larger the aggregate bandwidth requirement for live stream distribution from the encoder to a Windows Media server. To estimate the aggregate bandwidth of a multiple-bit-rate profile, calculate the sum of each video bit rate in the profile, the audio bit rate, and the script bit rate (if the profile contains scripts). Only a single audio stream is encoded for all of the video streams.

A single-bit-rate profile has a lower processor requirement and requires less storage space. Selecting one bit rate is best suited for:

You can edit or delete any audience in the list, or create a custom audience. When assigning the bit rate for your custom audience, consider the additional traffic that must pass over the network.

Note   If you change the audience settings during your current encoding session, save the profile and the session and then restart the encoder to make sure that your changes take effect.

Related Topics


© 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.