Quick Overview:
Digitize the media using a sofware product designed for that purpose.
Convert the digitized media to RealMedia format.
Upload the files to the server in the proper directory.
Properly reference the video/audio files.
Links:
Helix Producer Basic
Preparing media for the Real Media Streaming server is a 4 step process.
- Digitize the media from its source (Audiotape, Videotape, CD, etc)
to a digital file on a computer. Recommended software for this
purpose include Adobe Premiere (tm) or Strata StudioPro (tm). Premiere
works well for both Audio and Video. A lower end, but still very useful
product, is the free iMovie program that comes with the Mac. It's best
to consult the manuals or the products on-line help site for specific
assistance in accomplishing your media import.
Once you have imported your media file, you'll need to save it. Frequently it is easiest to work with the various movie files, even if you are working with a sound-only file. The .mpg format is the most standard and versatile, and most applications can both write to and read from this file format, though .aiff and QuickTime formats usually work well too. Save your file to a local hard drive, and be sure that you have enough space for the file being created - video files can easily grow to be 1 Gigabyte or more.
Important: The computing center, to comply with copywrite laws, will not condone the development or publishing of any content owned by another individual. This includes, but is not limited to, audio or video tracks from commercial products such as music CD's or commercial videotapes. The Center for Information Technology reserves the right to remove any content that is illegally published, to revoke any or all computing resource accounts of any user found violating this policy, and Oberlin College reserves the right to take diciplinary action or to commence criminal or civil actions against any user found violating this policy. Additionally, the CIT does not allow users to attach their own audio or video hardware to our public machines without explicit prior permission.
- Convert digitized files to the RealMedia format. Real Networks
provides a free program “Helix Producer Basic” that allows
one to convert files into the RealMedia format. This product can
be found at the bottom of the following page. http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/basic.html
Helix Universal Server, the streaming software that the Oberlin server offers, can stream hinted QuickTime clips to Apple's QuickTime Player 4 and later. It can deliver QuickTime clips encoded in all major proprietary and standards-based codecs, including Sorenson, Cinepak, Qualcomm PureVoice, and Qdesign. Helix Universal Server can stream live QuickTime broadcasts from Sorenson Broadcaster, as well as simulated broadcasts from Playlist Broadcaster and the Helix Universal Server SLTA utility.
Note: If you encode a QuickTime clip with a standards-based codec, such as h.261, h.263, or MP3, you can also stream the clip to RealPlayer 8 and higher. RealNetworks media players do not play QuickTime clips encoded with proprietary codecs such as Sorenson, however.
- Upload the media files to the right directory on the Web Server.
Because RealMedia files are delivered to the user in a different way
than web pages are, they need to be placed in a different place in
your account on the Web server. When you FTP to the web server, you
will usually go immediately into your web directory, where your HTML
and graphics files live. You will need to navigate up one level to
what is known as your "home" directory and find the directory
called "rmedia".
Enter this directory, and upload your media files as binary format
(this is the default on almost all FTP software). Note: If you place
real media files in your web directory you will not be able to use
them!
- Reference correctly the new audio or video files so that players
can find and recognize it. You can embed a link to a real media
file directly into an html document as follows:
http://isis.cc.oberlin.edu:8080/ramgen/userid/filename.rm
To create and view a "live" stream, the Helix Producer product needs to be running and to have the server destination set. The settings in the server destination panel of Helix Producer will be as follows:
Last updated
April 6, 2004
