Video Podcast - A Video-On-Demand Service
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A video podcast is an Internet-based broadcast and a type of video-on-demand service. A video podcast is also known as a vidcast or a vodcast. Video podcasts are generally delivered as a download-when-you-want service. However, to save a user from regularly visiting the website of the video podcast to check for the availability of new episodes, information is delivered to the user in the form of an RSS or Atom feed. Although, there is no standard video codec used for video podcasts, the most common format used to deliver a video podcast is H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC). Other formats used are Windows Media Video and AVI (compressed using DivX or Xvid). H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is popular, because of the fact that not only does it have a great size-to-quality ratio, but also as the iPod has the ability to play this video. iPod, incidentally, is responsible for the popularity of the entire concept of podcasts and it is the most popular personal media player in the world.
In order to get a video podcast on a regular basis, special software known as a pod catcher is needed. The most popular pod catcher is iTunes, which is available for Windows and Apple's own Mac OS X. iTunes is necessary if you want to transfer and watch videos on an iPod. Miro Media Player (formerly known as Democracy Player) is another popular pod catcher software. Miro claims to be a comprehensive video podcast solution. Miro for Windows is based on the VLC media player, which gives it a near-universal codec independence. You can download and play a video podcast in almost any format through the use of Miro.
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A video podcast is generally downloaded through the use of two methods. The first method is the client-server model and the second method is the BitTorrent-based peer-to-peer distribution system. In a client-server model, the RSS or atom feed, which carries the information about a video podcast, includes a direct HTTP or FTP download link. The pod catcher will read the feed and display the show notes to a user, based on which the user can choose whether he wants to download the video podcast or not. If the user clicks on the download button, the pod catcher will download the video podcast through the use of the download link given in the feed.
The BitTorrent method to download a video podcast uses the BitTorrent protocol. Here, the RSS feed does not contain the download link, but carries a link to a small torrent file. The pod catcher downloads the torrent file from the video podcast website and its in-built bit torrent client activates itself, to make it possible for the user to download the video podcast, without choking the bandwidth of the video podcast server. So, the most popular device to receive a video podcast is an iPod, the most popular pod catcher is iTunes, and the two methods described above are used to download video podcasts, although today, the BitTorrent method is more popular out of the two methods described above.
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