What is Vector Streaming

Vector streaming is a concept technology which merges Scalable Vector Graphics (a popular format is FLASH by Macromedia) and Streaming Media (Quicktime by Apple is a popular example).

As you may know, FLASH's fortie is it vector engine which can produce some very impressive animations with small bandwidth usage over the Internet. FLASH also has the "plug-in" capability of embedding streaming media, but these plug-ins are proprietary. So you can view streaming media (video and music) with FLASH, but you can't make them with FLASH.

Quicktime on the otherhand is compression technology which is designed to compress video in a very effective manner. Typically, 24 frames are played in one seconded to create the illusion of smooth animation. So a 1 minute video requires 1440 frames.

Streaming is when you begin to render frames as they are transmitted...so the previous example would start to render the frames to the Quicktime or FLASH player before the entire video file (containing 1440 frames) has completely downloaded. The advantage here is that you actually get to enjoy the presentation while it is downloading.

Streaming Vectors as you can imagine would take the best of both worlds and allow for presentations to be broadcasted via the internet. Smaller bandwidth, faster downloads, more economical overhead.

There are downsides to this concept technology. If you have ever seen a FLASH site, you may have noticed that the artwork looks stylized...often referred to as cartoony. This is in fact, what vector graphics look like. Just as most people can destingish the difference between water colors and oil paints. Vector graphics are most certainly not photographs.

"But doesn't FLASH already stream vector graphics?"...not to my knowledge. It does allow for streaming of a Movie Clip, but this is not quite the same thing. A Movie Clip is an object of the FLASH movie which has keyframe controls and scripting. They can be loaded independantly as the main FLASH file plays.

It seems that it shouldn't be too hard to integrate a streaming video into vector graphics...I don't know if there is anything to gain other than the novelty of it, but I haven't seen it done. I welcome any discussion about this subject.

James Scott