realmedia streaming video

[avia]

I have a large video file (about 10 mins) in various versions, on one of my domains. The smallest file size is Real Media at about 80Mb.

I know it's big so obviously it's better to stream it in real time rather than visitors having to wait half an hour for a download before they can view it (because they won't...).

I gather that hostgator supports realmedia streaming but it doesn't seem to work if you just ftp the media files and the page they're embedded in.

What else do I have to do? How do I make it work? (Hopefully it's not something geeky like installing realserverhelix or something, because I'm much too ignorant to be a geek.)

Thanks.

[lktree]

are you using a .ram file to link to your .rm file?

In case you're not, try it like this:

using a plain text editor like notepad type the url path to your .rm file, for example:

http://mywebsite.com/my_real_file.rm

and save that as my_real_file.ram (or whatever name you choose). Upload it to your site and link to that to stream your file, instead of linking directly to the file itself.

Hope that helps
Les K

[avia]

Thanks for the advice. Truth is the file's too large to download for anyone to view and hostgator doesn't support what I wanted to do. So what I did was convert it into a windows .wmv file which was much smaller and on a cable connection it's as good as streaming. (ADSL's not quite broad enough for the quality I needed.)

But I did test your solution. Like I said the file's too large (80Mb), so I didn't get to see pictures but something was definitely happening.

I'm gobsmacked by how clever and elegant (and secret?) the solution is.

I'll certainly use it for smaller files, because although I have my privacy reservations about Real media, and used to think their sound and picture quality were junk, they seem to have picked up lately. So for smaller files I'll certainly give it a try.

Thanks a lot!

[avia]

In fact I just tried it on a short version and it works great. I reduced the quality to ADSL for my less fortunate friends but the loss isn't completely gross. In fact it's not much different from the wmv version. I think I'm going to do all the video on the site. Now if only I could embed it...?

Check it out if you like.

http://mediagi.com/media/showreel.ram

Thanks for the tip lktree!!!

[lktree]

no problem :lol: