One of the great things about the Flip camcorder is that it saves video using the H.264 Codec. If you haven’t heard, H.264 is arguably the best quality video codec out there, renowned for its high quality, low file size, and lack of artifacting. Luckily, since the release of Flash 9, H.264 is now a web standard. So, if you want to convert your flip MP4 videos to FLV files (from their native mp4 format), all you have to do is rename from “filename.mp4″ to “filename.flv”, and the video should play back with any video player.

Also note, this applies to any mp4 video as well. If you want to convert videos from MP4 to FLV, try renaming the file before you mess with transcoding the video to FLV with a third party encoding program.

HTTP Streaming can be several things. Here is an attempt to outline the different HTTP streaming protocols:

MP3/AAC/aacPlus HTTP Streaming:
This is usually the SHOUTcast or Icecast ICY protocol, which uses ADTS packetization over TCP. This is NOT compatible with ANY RTSP streaming. This uses an ICY based Streaming Server such as SHOUTcast or Icecast2. This is the part that is MOST confusing: QuickTime/Darwin Streaming Server includes an ICY server module for MP3 streaming only. It is based the old deprecated Icecast1 protocol, and is no longer supported or recommended. Icecast2 is the preferred server here.

If you are broadcasting live flash video with Wowza streaming server, occasionally a client may receive an error along the lines of “Stream not found”. The reason for this problem is typically that port 1935 is not open on their firewall, which is essential for viewing RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) streams. Alternatively, if you are running Wowza on your own server, you can configure it to stream through port 80 using RTMPT, which is an extension of HTTP. See the pricing of our Live Flash hosting plans for professional flash video broadcasting.

Many times, you may want to have a listener stream MP3s from your site, but you don’t have any streaming software set up. One solution is to create an M3U file which acts as a playlist that opens up with many mainstream MP3 players such as iTunes and Winamp. Following is an example of an M3U playlist:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:199,Radiohead - Creep
http://www.yoursite.com/radiohead-creep.mp3
#EXTINF:217,Pink Floyd - Money
http://www.yoursite.com/pinkfloyd-money.mp3

The .m3u file can be placed on any web server, and linked to a web page with the standard a href tag. For instance, to link to a file named “playlist.m3u” from a web page in the same directory with the file, the link could be:

<a href="playlist.m3u">Play my playlist</a>

M3U files are simply text files with a .m3u extension instead of a .txt extension. When opened in a browser from clicking on a link to an m3u file, the listener’s default audio program will launch the playlist. Many mp3 players support the m3u format, including Winamp and iTunes.

Here are the contents of an example M3U file:
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:210,Song Title
mp3/song_title.mp3
#EXTINF:123,Song Title 2
mp3/song_title2.mp3

For each additional song in the playlist, you must add “#EXTINF:” followed by the length of the song in seconds, and the song title. The next line should be the path to the media. This can either be relative to the location of the mp3 file (e.g. mp3/song_title.mp3) or absolute (e.g. http://www.your-site.com/mp3/song_title.mp3)

Decks and Cards

WAP sites are generally one file that contains many sub-pages within the master WML page. Each page is defined with a special tag called “<card>”. This is why WML pages are known as “decks”, because they contain multiple cards. Each card can contain text, links, input fields, tasks, images, and more. You can provide navigation from card to card with links that work just like HTML anchors (with a # sign to indicate the id of the card.)

Example WAP code

Here is an example WAP site with two cards, each one containing a link to a different type of 3gp mobile video.

We are proud to announce the latest member center plug-in, our very own file viewer application. With this new feature, members are able to view all of their media files in one easy-to-use interface. This application also makes it a breeze to embed your media into any web page. Just find which video you want to link to and copy & paste the provide code. You can also customize FLV video embedding, choosing your own skinned video player that just works, no complicated uploads of javascript or flash swf players! If you don’t already have an account, sign up for our affordable video hosting today!

Note: for GravityLab Multimedia customers, this method only applies to our Live Broadcasting packages. Pseudo-streaming is available with all standard on-demand video hosting accounts, and does not require rtmp configuration.

1. Download the free JW Player from www.jeroenwijering.com and unzip the file somewhere on your computer
2. Open the newly created directory, you should see several files. Upload the following files to your web server, or to your GravityLab home directory.
   • readme.html
   • swfobject.js
   • player.swf
3. Open readme.html in your favorite HTML or text editor.
4. Find the code that begins with <div id=”container”> and ends with </script>. This is the section of code you’ll need to edit and then copy and paste into your own page.

Here’s a short summary of the best encoding bit-rates and formats for mobile video

Problem: I can’t access my GravityLab Multimedia files with Internet Explorer!

Answer: Make sure to use the following format in the URL bar for accessing your GravityLab FTP account:

ftp://username:password@ftp1.gravlab.com