Video & Audio Streaming

[fritz]

I want to stream video from my domain. How do I do it? Where do I find the documentation.  What video formats and resources are supported? Is compression suggested? What do you recommend. Thanks, Morgan  

[AlphaWolf]

Hi Morgan

I think Mike answered this in your trouble ticket, but I thought this would be a good thing to have answered here as well.

you can encode most formats into wmv with the windows media encoder. windows movie maker 2 is able to capture video and encode it. all free programs

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...er/default.aspx

once you have the wmv file, you can use the <object> and <embed> tags, as below

note that you only have to insert your file name below. there is some code in there that will automatically download necessary codecs should the user not have them

play around with the showcontrols, autostart etc. that should all be pretty self explanatory

real media can also be encoded with the free real producer basic

as far as i know there are no free quicktime encoding tools.

you can always download trial versions of video editing software if needed

<p>
<OBJECT ID="mediaPlayer" CLASSID="CLSID:22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95" CODEBASE=http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab#Version=5,1,52,701 STANDBY="Loading Microsoft Windows Media Player components..." TYPE="application/x-oleobject">
<PARAM NAME="fileName" VALUE="NAMEOFYOURFILE.wmv">
<PARAM NAME="animationatStart" VALUE="true">
<PARAM NAME="transparentatStart" VALUE="true">
<PARAM NAME="autoStart" VALUE="true">
<PARAM NAME="showControls" VALUE="false">
</OBJECT>
</p>

Peace

Wolf

[fritz]

Hi Wolf,


I have Final Cut Pro and Compressor, Cleaner, and other higher end programs. I don't remember a wmv option. I remember MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.  All my video is on Apple not PC. The Encoder appears to be only PC supported.

What suggestions do you have for an Apple oriented producer like me?

What about Quicktime?

I am thinking that any player will play these industry standard MPEG file formats 1 or 2. So all I have to do is upload MPEGs to my domain and then add the code you provided? I imagine different  code for quicktime?

Thanks so much for the timely response, Morgan

[AlphaWolf]

Hmm...the only issue is that Quicktime frequently causes havoc on Windows machines and many people, like myself, refuse to download it to play videos, etc.  Since 90% of the visitors we get on most of our sites are running a Windows operating system, that is something to think about.

I'm sorry but I have no clue about an Apple creating mnv format, though I know Real can be created on a Mac.  I did a quick search online and found nothing regarding wmv's being created with a Mac.

Peace

Wolf

[fritz]

How About something like this:
http://www.videolan.org/
It is an opensource video streaming server? Not sure what it is... Maybe you know... Could I use this on my domain?  

[AlphaWolf]

This software is for producing live streaming video, and requires any visitor to have a specific VLC client.  It is not the same as having a video file on the web server that people can access at any time by clicking it. (such as quicktime, real and windows media player do)

This software would run on our servers, but we would not install it on anything except a dedicated server because live streaming video takes up so much in terms of system resources, when you are doing a live broadcast, that it is not viable for a shared server solution.

So basically, it is not the software you need, (since you are not live broadcasting), and if you DID want to live broadcast you would need either a dedicated server OR a host who specializes in that.  And charges around $500 per month to do so.

I would suggest you go to a MAC web developer's forum, (I am sure there are some around, though I have no clue of a URL), and ask them if there is a way to develop wmv files from a MAC - or settle on Quicktime, which works fine for Mac users and some windows users, but requires quicktime be downloaded on Windows machines, and again, a lot of people won't bother or won't trust it...or it will cause crashes on their system.

peace

Wolf