To display a banner image (along with a link to more information) while video is rendered in Windows Media Player, add an entry to a Windows Media metafile (a file with a .wvx file name extension) by doing the following:

1. In a text editor such as Notepad, add the following basic code while substituting the example server, paths, and file names with the appropriate information:
   
<ASX version = “3.0″>
<TITLE>Sample Demo</TITLE>
<BANNER HREF=”http://WebServerName/Images/Banner.bmp”>
<ABSTRACT>Learn more about our company</ABSTRACT>
<MOREINFO HREF=”http://WebServerName.com”/>
</BANNER>
<ENTRY>
<REF HREF=”mms://ServerName/PublishingPointName/Video.wmv”/>
</ENTRY>
</ASX>

   In the previous code, the HREF attribute of the BANNER element has the value http://WebServerName/Images/Banner.bmp that refers to a banner image (194 pixels wide by 32 pixels high) that is stored on a Web server. The text contained in the ABSTRACT element displays as a ToolTip when the user hovers over the banner graphic. Finally, when a user clicks the banner graphic, the URL provided in the MOREINFO element opens in a Internet browser, such as Internet Explorer. In this example, one digital media file named Video.wmv, which is stored on a computer running Windows Media Services, plays back in the Player.

For those whose businesses rely on the Internet to produce revenue the latest Google update, nicknamed Jagger, was one of the biggest events in the past couple years (probably since the Florida Update of 2003). With this 3-part update Google has essentially changed many of the rules and have thrown the SEO community for a loop.

In this update there are a few key areas that have impacted the way sites rank and how an SEO (or a business owner optimizing their own site) needs to approach and address the various components. The key areas that have been affected with this update are:

• The history of your web pages
• The way backlinks are counted
• Site content & structure

To embed an object into an HTML document, the object class ID is required. The class ID for Windows Media Player 7, 9, 10 and 11 is clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6.

Insert the following code into your HTML document to embed Windows Media Player 7 and later:

If you want to launch the standard Quicktime player outside of the web page, you need to create a reference movie — a tiny file that points to the URL of the real movie. Follow these steps to create a reference movie:

1. Put your actual movie on our server.
2. Open QuickTime Player on any computer with internet access
3. Choose Open URL (File menu) and type in the URL of your movie
4. Your movie should open. If it autoplays, stop it and rewind it to the beginning. Choose Save (not Save As). This creates a tiny reference movie that’s basically a wrapper around the URL of the actual movie.
5. Quit. Change the file extension of the little reference movie from .mov to .qtl .
6. Put the .qtl reference movie on your Web server and link to it from your Web page

To set up a movie for streaming over the Internet, compress the movie so that its data rate is appropriate for the bandwidth at which your users will connect. You can use the hinted streaming format with QuickTime Streaming Server or Darwin Streaming Server. The hint tracks, which are stored in the movie along with the video, audio, and other tracks, provide QuickTime Streaming Server software with information about the server, the transmission packet size, and the protocol to be used–in short, how to send the movie data over the network.

When you choose hinted streaming, “hint tracks” (information needed to stream the movie) are added to the movie. If the movie is already in the desired format, you can prepare a movie for streaming by opening the movie in QuickTime Player and choosing Export from the File menu, then Movie to Hinted Movie. If you want to change the movie’s format, follow the steps below.

Converting a movie for real-time streaming

1. Open your movie in QuickTime Player.

Instructions for creating the playlist file:

1. Open up a text editor such as Windows Notepad

3. Type in the FULL path to the Web Address (URL) of your MP3 or WMA music file.

If it’s an MP3 music file, type it in like this:

http://media.gravlab.com/editorialemergency/sample.mp3

Repeat for each mp3 you want to add
http://media.gravlab.com/editorialemergency/sample.mp3
http://media.gravlab.com/editorialemergency/sample.mp3
http://media.gravlab.com/editorialemergency/sample.mp3

Save this text file with an .m3u (universal playlist) extension.

Example: playlist.m3u

There is no limit to how may songs you can include in an individual playlist. In a playlist with more than one song, each song is buffered and streamed individually. Therefore, it makes no difference how many songs are referenced in one playlist file. Each song will play one after the other without user intervention. Also, in a playlist with more than one song, the site visitor can use the Media Player controls to skip forward or back a track (song) in the playlist, and also has the option of “previewing” a short clip or a series of short clips of each song in the playlist.

Link to the m3u file (you can put the .m3u file in your GravityLab account or on your website server, it makes no difference)

Here’s how to use Windows Media Encoder 9 to convert your AVI file into Windows Media video.

1. Double click the download, and install Windows Media Encoder on your system
2. After install, launch it.
3. Select “Convert a File” - Click “OK”
4. Browse and find your AVI in the “Source File” box
5. The “Output File” will automatically fill in with your file name, don’t change it
6. Click “NEXT”
7. Select “Windows Media server (streaming)”
8. Click Next
9. Select “Video - VHS Quality Video” and  “Audio - CD Quality Audio”
10. Select “400 kbps” uncheck 300kbps if it is checked
11. Type in your descriptions - Click next
12. Select “Begin converting when I click “Finish” - then click finish

When Windows Media Encoder is finished, go to your folder where your files are (you should have an AVI and WMV)

You can then upload the Windows Media Video file to your Gravlab account

Link to your video with mms://media.gravlab.com/your-account-name/your_file_name.wmv

Digital video files are usually stored to disk in movie files. These files often contain the sample data used by the movie as well. The Player API includes functions to store a movie, or a movie and all its associated sample data, to a file. By default, the movie data structure is stored at the beginning of the file, followed by any sample data, such as in Quicktime. By default, the sample data is interleaved, so that media samples that are displayed at the same time are stored close together, with the samples needed earliest stored first.

This typical streaming encoded movie file can be delivered by any web server, using common protocols such as HTTP and FTP, just as if it were an HTML file or a JPEG image. It is necessary only to name the file correctly and associate the filename extension with the correct MIME type on the server. (The correct filename extension for QuickTime movies is .mov, and the correct MIME type is 'video/quicktime'.)

When a file is delivered over a network or downloaded over the Internet, the entire file is not available immediately, but a typical QuickTime movie can be played while it downloads. This is called progressive download, or Fast Start. It works because the movie atom is stored at the beginning of the file, so QuickTime knows how to interpret the movie sample data even before it arrives, and because the movie data is intelligently interleaved with respect to display time.

It is also possible to create a movie file with the sample data stored first, followed by the movie data structure. This is not usually desirable, because the entire file must download before QuickTime can interpret the sample data. You can correct this kind of data inversion simply by opening the movie file in QuickTime and saving it as a new, self-contained file. QuickTime stores the movie data structure at the beginning of the file by default.

A QuickTime movie file may contain only a movie data structure, pointing to sample data in other files or URLs. In most cases, this type of movie can also play as the movie data downloads, because, again, the movie data structure allows QuickTime to interpret the incoming data, and because the data source for each track is specified independently, causing the network to perform a kind of interleaving by delivering all of the media independently and simultaneously. Obviously, this kind of interleaving is less reliable than the deliberate interleaving QuickTime does when creating a self-contained movie file, so playback may not always be as smooth.

When the bandwidth of a connection meets or exceeds the data rate of the movie, a well-formed QuickTime movie file can play as it downloads. This kind of progressive download, or Fast Start movie, provides the same user experience as real-time streaming.

If the connection is not fast enough to play the movie in real time, you can either wait until the download completes or play as much of the movie as has downloaded at a given time. QuickTime can even estimate the required download time and begin playback when it calculates that enough data has arrived to play the movie smoothly (because the remaining data is expected to arrive by the time it is needed).

QuickTime movies can also be delivered using real-time protocols such as RTP and RTSP. This requires a streaming server, such as the QuickTime Streaming Server or Darwin Streaming Server. To stream movies in real time, the server requires information about how to packetize each track in the movie. This information is stored in special tracks in a QuickTime movie, known as hint tracks. There are functions in the API for adding hint tracks to existing movies, as well as flags that can be used to tell QuickTime to create hint tracks when saving a movie to disk.

Movies with hint tracks can also be delivered using HTTP or FTP protocols for progressive download, but additional bandwidth is needed to carry the hint tracks, which are used only for streaming. Consequently, it is best to determine how you will deliver a movie before saving it as hinted or nonhinted.

In addition to progressive download and real-time streaming of stored movie files, QuickTime supports broadcasting, the creation of one or more real-time streams from real-time sources, such as cameras or microphones. This involves capturing the incoming data, compressing it to the desired bandwidth, and generating streams of outgoing packets, all in real time. The QuickTime broadcast API is currently available for the Mac OS only; it is not available for Windows or Java.