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Turn Your Computer into a Streaming Media Server with Orb

By RR | January 17, 2010

Video is hard. Okay, pointing a camcorder at your nephews as they open yet another Star Wars Lego set is not hard. It’s what you do afterwards that gets challenging. In days before hard drive camcorders, you had to transfer your footage to your computer in real time, typically from a small tape called a MiniDV. This meant that 40 minutes of footage equaled 40 minutes of capture time. Now, with hard drives built right into cameras (my Canon is a smallish 40 GB), you can simply drag the files you need from the camcorder to the computer.

But that’s the least of your concerns. Once you get your movie onto the computer, you need to use video editing software to edit your project and export it to a playable format. Editing is a pain: I use Adobe CS4, a pricey, high-end editor that does what I want it to do (once I figure it out). There are also plain jane editors out there, and a huge number of mid-range software packages. The best of this software will export to nearly any format–.wmv, .flv, .mov, .mpeg, or DVD–in multiple resolutions. But you have to know what is going to work best for your needs.

Then, once you have a format, you need to find someplace to host your video, assuming you are uploading it and not just burning a DVD, which itself can require considerable expertise. Now, you need to pay attention to the format that sites require (mostly Flash, but some are picky about this), the length of your video, and the all-important factor, size. Very few sites allow for both unlimited length and unlimited size. Bandwidth is also important: some sites restrict the amount of traffic your videos can receive. Finally, some sites offer “progressive download,” as opposed to true streaming, requiring viewers to wait for the video to finish buffering before they can view it.

Sigh. Like I said, video is hard. Much, much different than audio. Put the CD in, rip it to MP3, and you are done. Or, download the MP3 from iTunes. About the only hard part of audio on the web is figuring out which one of your computers is authorized to play which iTunes files.

Okay–back to video. Orb seems to solve a number of the above problems. If you are willing to dedicate an old desktop or laptop to your media, Orb might be just the fit for you. Here’s how it works: you install the software on your computer, it finds all of your music, video, and images automatically, and then, provided you leave your computer on and online, you can access all of your media via the web. You can also invite others to view your media with no plugins required. And it looks like you can embed your stuff, too. A couple of quick caveats: your video does need to be in flash format, or it won’t work.

Since I routinely record videos of over 40 minutes and over 1 GB in size, Orb may be a good solution.

Categories: Multimedia | Tags: Orb | 1 Comment »

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