streaming video questions

not sure how to set up

[Trisha]

I have a client who is possibly interested in having streaming video on his site. (not an adult site, it's a music site). I asked the hosting company I resell for if it is ok to run on his servers. This is what he said:

"We don't run any proprietary servers, so the video will need to be prepared in a form that can be delivered via HTTP streaming. All modern streaming video formats support this."

I don't really understand how to actually set this up, what code do I actually use etc. The client said: "I can convert the file into quick time or any format you wish", which is good I guess. I don't which formats are considered to be "modern" though.

Has anyone had experience with streaming video here? Is there is anything else I should know about it, like bandwidth consumption issues, etc?

Thanks for any help.

[jatar_k]

what formats do we have? avi, mpeg, real media, quicktime? There may be others too, not sure.

Strangely I was having a conversation about this today and we decided that quicktime may be the best way to go.

The site in question was worried about file size and usability. The format that balances size against most compatible. He presently uses avi and many people seem to have trouble viewing it. mpeg, he said, is too darn big. Real has some quality issues but would be his second choice. Quicktime seems to be the most cross platform/browser compatible, keeping in mind speed and quality.

Please keep in mind that I could be way off here. I have done quite a bit of real media serving but not worked much with other formats so this was a combination of a few different viewpoints. Straighten me out if I am way off. :)

[BlobFisk]

I've always gone for Real Media, as I think it has the most exposure.

I have tried on numerous occasions to install the latest version of Quicktime on my machine, and while it installs fine there are always problems when I try to view any .mov files - it won't and it can cause my machine to start acting up (I'm using Win2kPro)... I've found it bizarre and tried installing a few times, but with the same results all the time - anyhow, getting back to the point, this has resulted me in scrapping Quicktime altogether on my machine and becoming very wary of using it for streaming media online.

My vote still goes to Real Media... Unless it's a live video, you can put the .ram and .rm files on an ordinary web server without trouble.

[Trisha]

After thinking about it more, I realized I did have a client send me a mpg file to put on his site once. I coded it just like this:

<a href="thismovie.mpg">click here</a>

Will this work with .ram and .rm also? And what is the difference between .ram and .rm anyway?

It sounds like Quicktime and/or Real are the best choices. If my client can supply both, I might as well include both on the site and let the user decide which they would rather use.

Personally, I rarely ever view any video files on the web anyway, so I have no personal preferences or experiences.

Thanks for your input!
Trisha

[jatar_k]

when I did real media serving the .rm file was the actual video and the .ram file was the linked to file that had some config stuff in it. ie play from this time to this time etc.

I was consulting my realmedia guide to see if that was the case and it didn't explicitly say but always referred to the actual video file as .rm.

The only time I have run into trouble is when people have tried to embed the viewer into the page, I always allow it to open the external player.

There is also .smil which allows you to configure the actual player and sync multiple feeds etc. Real media is actually really cool. You can do almost anything with it.

[Trisha]

Forgive me for asking what is probably a silly question:
for real media do I write the html like this:

<a href="thismovie.rm">click here</a>

or, like this:

<a href="thismovie.ram">click here</a>?

[jatar_k]

that would depend on the filename.