How do you choose whether to deliver a movie using progressive download, streaming, or broadcasting? It’s an important question for you, and since GravityLab’s business is delivering your content to your audience with the best possible user experience in mind, it’s an important question for us, too.
All all of the major streaming media codecs, both audio and video, can be delivered as progressive downloads. Streaming is limited to sound, video, and text. Broadcasting is further limited to compression schemes and quality settings compatible with real-time capture and compression.  Read more... (1183 words, estimated 4:44 mins reading time)

If you want to stream Quicktime files, you will need to encode the videos correctly so they can be played on a streaming server. GravityLab provides this encoding service for affordable prices. We make the process simple for you so that you don’t have to acquire a new skillset just to get your videos online. However, if you are technically inclined, check out the following utilities for Quicktime files.

Linking to mp3 Streams

Linking to mp3 streams from your mp3 hosting account requires a text file with the extension .m3u. This file has the URL to your mp3 stream in it. For instance, if a mp3 playlist named “Blues” was playing from the Streaming Server, and the domain name of the server was stream.mydomain.net, the m3u file would contain the link:

http://stream.mydomain.net:8000/blues

The “:8000″ is the port for streaming mp3 playlists from Darwin Streaming Server. If you enable port 80 streaming the “:8000″ is not required. The .m3u file could be placed on any web server, and linked to a web page with the standard tag. For instance, to link to a file named “blues.m3u” from a web page in the same directory with the file, the link could be:

Microsoft Internet Information Server 3.0

If you are running Windows NT Server and IIS 3.0 and want to configure the MIME types, create a registration entry file with a .reg file name extension:

1. Open Microsoft Notepad or another text editor.
2. Type in the following text. (Do not cut and paste the text from the Web page.)

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet
/Services/InetInfo/Parameters/MimeMap]

“video/x-ms-asf,asf,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-asf,asx,,5″=”"
“audio/x-ms-wma,wma,,5″=”"
“audio/x-ms-wax,wax,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wmv,wmv,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wvx,wvx,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wm,wm,,5″=”"
“video/x-ms-wmx,wmx,,5″=”"
“application/x-ms-wmz,wmz,,5″=”"
“application/x-ms-wmd,wmd,,5″=”"
3. Save the file with a .reg file name extension.
4. Double-click on the file to add the entries to your registry.
5. After creating this file, stop and then restart all IIS services.

Apache  Read more... (223 words, estimated 54 secs reading time)

.qt video/quicktime
.qtc video/x-qtc
.qti image/x-quicktime
.qtif image/x-quicktime
.qtl video/quicktime
.smi application/smil
.smil application/smil

.rmm audio/x-pn-realaudio
.rmp audio/x-pn-realaudio
.rmp audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin

.ra audio/x-pn-realaudio
.ra audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin
.ra audio/x-realaudio
.ram audio/x-pn-realaudio

.rv video/vnd.rn-realvideo

RTSP protocol is used for years for streaming Real Video and Streaming Real Audio. And starting with Windows Media Player 9 Series, Windows Media Services 9 Series and Windows Server 2003 RTSP Protocol is now the default protocol for streaming Windows Media.

Windows Media Services 9 Series can use RTSP, HTTP, or MMS for streaming. It uses RTSP when trying to connect to Windows Media Player 9 Series. If that attempt is unsuccessful, the server uses MMS or HTTP to connect to the Player. This process is called rollover. Earlier versions of Windows Media Player do not support RTSP, but they do support MMS. If the server cannot connect to the Player by using MMS, then the server tries to connect using HTTP. Windows Media Player automatically tries to rollover to different protocols according to its Windows Media property settings.  Read more... (252 words, estimated 1:00 mins reading time)

No. Windows Media Player 9 Series can play files in a wide variety of digital media file formats, but Windows Media Services 9 Series cannot stream all of those files. In certain cases, you may need to convert digital media files into a compatible format before you can stream them.

Servers running Windows Media Services 9 Series can stream files that are in the Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA), Windows Media Video (WMV), Advanced Systems Format (ASF), and Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG)-1 Layer 3 (MP3) formats. However, Windows Media Services cannot use the intelligent streaming feature to stream files in MP3 format.  Read more... (188 words, estimated 45 secs reading time)