Authoring, for the purposes of this book, is the process of choosing your audio content and digitizing, encoding, and delivering that content (in any variety of streaming formats) to your streaming server for delivery to your audience. In the authoring process, you'll use a number of different tools. This book will walk you through the processes with Step-by-Step tutorials. Though dictionaries haven't caught up with this new common usage, using the word "author" as a verb is sort of catchy. Live Versus On-DemandYou can choose from two different authoring scenarios. The first scenario is "live," where real-time streaming audio is sent from the author's computer to a streaming server computer for redistribution to multiple listeners. The second scenario is "on-demand," where streaming audio files are authored and then uploaded to a streaming server computer for redistribution to multiple listeners. Live streams require an encoding application that talks directly to the streaming server. This process is susceptible to interruptions because more live network paths are involved, resulting in more points of possible failure. Because of this, live streaming is typically only performed when another alternative doesn't exist, such as a live concert broadcast or a radio simulcast. When creating on-demand streams, authors can take advantage of third-party software tools that export to the desired streaming audio format. Third-party tools for on-demand authoring also offer advanced processes such as "set it and forget it" batch encoding for multiple audio files to multiple formats. |