Different Streaming Technologies

Three major streaming technologies include:

RealMedia Quicktime Windows Media technology

A streaming technology consists of hardware and software components that work together to create, store and deliver media files over the web. Each streaming technology has three components that affect you and the students who use your web site. These include: 1. Servers and media files 2. Media players or plug-ins (students) 3. And, encoding and creation tools

QuickTime, RealMedia and Windows Media each have their own corresponding server designed to stream files in a preferred format – namely their own. Servers and media files:

The second component for each technology is a media player. The player is a plug-in component for web browsers. ***Users need the player installed on their computer to view or listen to streaming media designed for that player****

A third component common to each steaming technology is file creation and encoding. This relates to the way media files are created for a particular streaming format. So when developing your media you might need access to special software for converting files into the streaming format of your choice.

What is Needed to Insert and View QuickTime Movies on the Web Page? You must have Apple QuickTime installed on your system. Next, go to your web browser and make sure the QuickTime plug-in has been activated Finally, make sure you have an HTML editor. (word processors also work well) Do all three of these check out? Good..

How to Put QuickTime Movies into Web Pages? You will need to follow the next slide. If you wish to preview your work, make sure your web browser has the QuickTime plug-in mentioned earlier.

Embedding Basics The basic command for placing any QuickTime movie into a web page is EMBED. This is what a basic QuickTime HTML statement looks like..... Replace the name "Sample.mov" with the name of the movie you wish to place on your page. Also, change the values for height and width to match the dimensions of your movie. If you aren't sure about the dimensions of your movie, open your movie in the QuickTime movie player and select Get Info from the Movie menu. Then select Choose Size from the pop-up menu.

QuickTime Attributes The QuickTime EMBED command has more attributes than just Height and Width. Some of the more basic attributes are explained in detail below. HEIGHT = Size in pixels This attribute specifies the height (in pixels) of the embedded document. The Height parameter is required for any standard QuickTime embedding. If you would like to have the QuickTime controller on your movie, then add 24 to this attribute. For example. The actual dimensions of a movie could be...Height = 120, Width = 160. For a controller to be present on the web page, 24 would be added to Height=120 resulting in Height=144. The HTML text will look like this : WIDTH = Size in pixels This attribute specifies the width (in pixels) of the embedded document. The Width parameter is required for any standard QuickTime embedding. This attribute is unaffected by the presence of a controller. CONTROLLER = Value Controller is an optional parameter. This sets the visibility of the movie controller. Acceptable values for this parameter are True and False. If you do not specify, the default value is True.

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