Access emulation and buffering techniques for streaming of non-stream format video files

Videos recorded in a non-stream format are widely used in the Internet. However, they are not directly utilized in video streaming. For streaming without download a time consuming format conversion is usually required. For the direct utilisation of such videos in video-on-demand systems, we have developed a new service model and implementation techniques. We describe the techniques in detail along with a prototype movie-on-demand system. With a low-end Linux server, the system successfully supports over 30 clients connected at the same time