The following table lists the supported codecs and their earliest required SWF file format and Adobe Flash Player versions. Our video hosting accounts also support a huge list of Windows Media, Quicktime, Real Media, mp4, mp3, 3gp, 3gp2 and more.

*Flash Player plays files containing H.264 and AAC that are derived from the standard MPEG-4 container format such as F4V, MP4, M4A, MOV, MP4V, 3GP, 3G2.

Flash Player 9(v 9.0.115.0)supports playback of the following subsets of the MPEG-4 standards:

1. What kinds of encoders are supported?

   The protocol specification does not limit the encoder selection. However, the current Apple implementation should interoperate with encoders that produce MPEG-2 Transport Streams containing H.264 video and AAC audio (HE-AAC or AAC-LC). Encoders that are capable of broadcasting the output stream over UDP should also be compatible with the current implementation of the Apple provided segmenter software.

   Apple has tested the current implementation with the following commercial encoders:

   • Inlet Technologies Spinnaker 7000
   • Envivio 4Caster C4
2. What are the specifics of the video and audio formats supported?

   Although the protocol specification does not limit the video and audio formats, the current Apple implementation supports the following formats:

   • Video: H.264 Baseline Level 3.0
   • Audio:
     • HE-AAC or AAC-LC up to 48 kHz, stereo audio
     • MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) 8 kHz to 48 kHz, stereo audio
     Note: iPad, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch (2nd generation and later) support H.264 Baseline 3.1. If your app runs on older versions of iPhone or iPod touch, however, you should use H.264 Baseline 3.0 for compatibility.
3. What duration should media files be?

   The main point to consider is that shorter segments result in more frequent refreshes of the index file, which might create unnecessary network overhead for the client. Longer segments will extend the inherent latency of the broadcast and initial startup time. A duration of 10 seconds of media per file seems to strike a reasonable balance for most broadcast content.

4. How many files should be in listed in the index file during a continuous, ongoing session?

   The specification requires at least 3 media files be listed in the index file, but the optimum number may be larger. The client identifies an ongoing session by the lack of an #EXT-X-ENDLIST tag in the index file. The client does not allow the user to seek into the last two files in the index for ongoing broadcasts. Periodically, the client requests a new copy of the index.

   The important point to consider when choosing the optimum number is that the number of files available during a live session constrains the client’s behavior when doing play/pause and seeking operations. The longer the list, the longer the client can be paused without losing its place in the broadcast, the further back in the broadcast a new client begins, and the wider the time range within which the client can seek. The trade-off is that a longer index file adds to network overhead—during live broadcasts, the clients are all refreshing the index file regularly, so it does add up, even though the index file is typically small.

   Another point to consider is that clients typically request new copies of the index file at higher rate when the index contains a shorter list of files.

5. What data rates are supported?

   The data rate that a content provider chooses for a stream is most influenced by the target client platform and the expected network topology. The streaming protocol itself places no limitations on the data rates that can be used. The current implementation has been tested using audio-video streams with data rates as low as 100 Kbps and as high as 1.6 Mbps to iPhone. Audio-only streams at 64 Kbps are recommended as alternates for delivery over slow cellular connections.

   Note: If the data rate exceeds the available bandwidth, there is more latency before startup and the client may have to pause to buffer more data periodically. During a broadcast using an index file that provides a moving window into the content, the client will eventually fall behind in such cases, causing one or more segments to be dropped. In the case of VOD, no segments are lost, but inadequate bandwidth does cause slower startup and periodic stalling while data buffers.
6. What is a .ts file?

   A .ts file contains an MPEG-2 Transport Stream. This is a file format that encapsulates a series of encoded media samples—typically audio and video. The file format supports a variety of compression formats, including MP3 audio, AAC audio, H.264 video, and so on. Not all compression formats are currently supported in the Apple HTTP Live Streaming implementation, however. (For a list of currently supported formats, see “Media Encoder.”)

7. What is an .M3U8 file?

   An .M3U8 file is a extensible playlist file format. It is an m3u playlist containing UTF-8 encoded text. The m3u file format is a de facto standard playlist format suitable for carrying lists of media file URLs. This is the format used as the index file for HTTP Live Streaming. For details, see IETF Internet-Draft of the HTTP Live Streaming specification.

8. How does the client software determine when to switch streams?

   The current implementation of the client observes the effective bandwidth while playing a stream. If a higher-quality stream is available and the bandwidth appears sufficient to support it, the client switches to a higher quality. If a lower-quality stream is available and the current bandwidth appears insufficient to support the current stream, the client switches to a lower quality.

   Note: For seamless transitions between alternate streams, the audio portion of the stream should be identical in all versions.
9. Where can I find a copy of the media stream segmenter from Apple?

   The media stream segmenter, file stream segmenter, and other tools are in the /usr/bin/ directory of Mac OS X computers, version 10.6 and later. These tools are frequently updated, so you should download the current version of the HTTP Live Streaming Tools from the Apple Developer website. See “Download the Tools” for details.

10. What settings are recommended for a typical HTTP stream, with alternates, for use with the media segmenter from Apple?

    Your encoder should produce MPEG-2 transport stream (.ts) files with the following characteristics for the Apple segmenter:

    • H.264 Baseline 3.0 video
    • Keyframes every 3 seconds
    • HE-AAC (version 1) stereo audio at 44.1 kHz
    • Four streams:
      • Cellular Fallback—Audio only or audio with still image, 64 Kbps
      • Low—96 Kbps video, 64 Kbps audio
      • Medium—256 Kbps video, 64 Kbps audio
      • High—800 Kbps video, 64 Kbps audio

    These settings are the current recommendations. There are also certain requirements. The current mediastreamsegmenter tool works only with MPEG-2 Transport Streams as defined in ISO/IEC 13818. The transport stream must contain H.264 (MPEG-4, part 10) video and AAC or MPEG audio. If AAC audio is used, it must have ADTS headers. H.264 video access units must use Access Unit Delimiter NALs, and must be in unique PES packets.

    The segmenter also has a number of user-configurable settings. You can obtain a list of the command line arguments and their meanings by typing man mediastreamsegmenter from the Terminal application. A target duration (length of the media segments) of 10 seconds is recommended, and is the default if no target duration is specified.

11. How can I specify what codecs or H.264 profile are required to play back my stream?

    Use the CODECS attribute of the EXT-X-STREAM-INF tag. When this attribute is present, it must include all codecs and profiles required to play back the stream. The following values are currently recognized:

    AAC-LC	“mp4a.40.2″
    HE-AAC	“mp4a.40.5″
    MP3	“mp4a.40.34″
    H.264 Baseline Profile level 3.0	“avc1.42001e” or “avc1.66.30” Note: Use “avc1.66.30” for compatibility with iPhone OS versions 3.0 to 3.12.
    H.264 Main Profile level 3.0	“avc1.4d001e” or “avc1.77.30” Note: Use “avc1.77.30” for compatibility with iPhone OS versions 3.0 to 3.12.

    The attribute value must be in quotes. If multiple values are specified, one set of quotes is used to contain all values, and the values are separated by commas. An example follows.

    #EXTM3U

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=500000

    mid_video_index.m38u

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=800000

    wifi_video_index.m38u

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=3000000, CODECS="avc1.4d001e, mp4a.40.5"

    h264main_heaac_index.m38u

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=64000, CODECS="mp4a.40.5"

    aacaudio_index.m38u

12. How can I create an audio-only stream from audio/video input?

    Add the -audio-only argument when invoking the stream or files segmenter.

13. How can I add a still image to an audio-only stream?

    Use the -meta-file argument when invoking the stream or file segmenter with -meta-type=picture to add an image to every segment. For example, this would add an image named poster.jpg to every segment of an audio stream created from the file track01.mp3:

    mediafilesegmenter -f /Dir/outputFile -a --meta-file=poster.jpg --meta-type=picture track01.mp3

    Remember that the image is typically resent every ten seconds, so it’s best to keep the file size small.

14. How can I specify an audio-only alternate to an audio-video stream?

    Use the CODECS and BANDWIDTH attributes of the EXT-X-STREAM-INF tag together.

    The BANDWIDTH attribute specifies the bandwidth required for each alternate stream. If the available bandwidth is enough for the audio alternate, but not enough for the lowest video alternate, the client switches to the audio stream.

    If the CODECS attribute is included, it must list all codecs required to play the stream. If only an audio codec is specified, the stream is identified as audio-only. Currently, it is not required to specify that a stream is audio-only, so use of the CODECS attribute is optional.

    The following is an example that specifies video streams at 500 Kbps for fast connections, 150 Kbps for slower connections, and an audio-only stream at 64 Kbps for very slow connections. All the streams should use the same 64 Kbps audio to allow transitions between streams without an audible disturbance.

    #EXTM3U

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=500000

    mid_video_index.m38u

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=150000

    3g_video_index.m38u

    #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1, BANDWIDTH=64000, CODECS="mp4a.40.5"

    aacaudio_index.m38u

15. What are the hardware requirements or recommendations for servers?

    See question #1 for encoder hardware recommendations.

    The Apple stream segmenter is capable of running on any Intel-based Mac. We recommend using a Mac with two Ethernet network interfaces, such as a Mac Pro or an XServe. One network interface can be used to obtain the encoded stream from the local network, while the second network interface can provide access to a wider network.

16. Does the Apple implementation of HTTP Live Streaming support DRM?

    No. However, media can be encrypted and key access can be limited using HTTPS authentication.

17. What client platforms are supported?

    iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch (requires iPhone OS version 3.0 or later) or any device with QuickTime X or later installed.

18. Is the protocol specification available?

    Yes. The protocol specification is an IETF Internet-Draft, at http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming.

19. Does the client cache content?

    The index file can contain an instruction to the client that content should not be cached. Otherwise, the client may cache data for performance optimization when seeking within the media.

20. Is this a real-time delivery system?

    No. It has inherent latency corresponding to the size and duration of the media files containing stream segments. At least one segment must fully download before it can be viewed by the client, and two may be required to ensure seamless transitions between segments. In addition, the encoder and segmenter must create a file from the input; the duration of this file is the minimum latency before media is available for download. Typical latency with recommended settings is in the neighborhood of 30 seconds.

21. What is the latency?

    Approximately 30 seconds, with recommended settings. See question #15.

22. Do I need to use a hardware encoder?

    No. Using the protocol specification, it is possible to implement a software encoder.

23. What advantages does this approach have over RTP/RTSP?

    HTTP is less likely to be disallowed by routers, NAT, or firewall settings. No ports need to be opened that are commonly closed by default. Content is therefore more likely to get through to the client in more locations and without special settings. HTTP is also supported by more content-distribution networks, which can affect cost in large distribution models. In general, more available hardware and software works unmodified and as intended with HTTP than with RTP/RTSP. Expertise in customizing HTTP content delivery using tools such as PHP is also more widespread.

    Also, HTTP Live Streaming is supported in Safari and the media player framework on iPhone OS. RTSP streaming is not supported.

24. Why is my stream’s overall bit rate higher than the sum of the audio and video bitrates?

    MPEG-2 transport streams can include substantial overhead. They utilize fixed packet sizes that are padded when the packet contents are smaller than the default packet size. Encoder and multiplexer implementations vary in their efficiency at packing media data into these fixed packet sizes. The amount of padding can vary with frame rate, sample rate, and resolution.

25. How can I reduce the overhead and bring the bit rate down?

    Using a more efficient encoder can reduce the amount of overhead, as can tuning the encoder settings. Also, the -optimize argument can be passed to the Apple mediastreamsegmenter. This removes some unnecessary padding and can significantly reduce the overhead, particularly for low-bandwidth streams.

26. Do all media files have to be part of the same MPEG-2 Transport Stream?

    No. You can mix media files from different transport streams, as long as they are separated by EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tags. See the protocol specification for more detail. For best results, however, all video media files should have the same height and width dimensions in pixels.

1. Open the Windows Media Administrator.
2. From the left side of the administrator, select Multicast Stations.
3. Select the program that contains the playlist that you want to modify and ensure that the program is stopped.
4. Click Streams, and then choose New.
5. For the name, it is best to use the file name of the file that you want to stream.
6. On the Source/Destination tab, specify a unicast URL for the file that you that want to add. This is typically like ms://localhost/filename.asf.

When you connect with a Windows Media Player client to the broadcast unicast publishing point, use the server name or IP address and the publishing point alias from step 5 in the first part of this section. For example: mms://wms1.microsoft.com/live.

via http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285292

#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>

Note: For .m3u files to work correctly, your web server must be configured to deliver the correct mime type for .m3u files. To do this with Apache (one of the most common web server applications), you can do one of the following:

1. In apache’s conf/ directory, open the file titled “mime.types” and add the following line: audio/x-mpegurl .m3u, and then you will now have to restart apache
2. In your web site’s root directory, create a file (if it doesn’t already exist) called “.htaccess”, and add the following line: audio/x-mpegurl .m3u

M3U playlists are compatible with all of GravityLab’s Audio Hosting accounts.

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.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">
<wml>
<!-- Your site code goes in between the wml tags -->
<card id="card_one" title="Card 1">
<p> <a href="rtsp://streaming-server-address/sample-movie.3gp">3gpp movie </a> </p>
<a href="#card_two">Next Page</a>
</card>
<card id="card_two" title="Card 2">
<p> <a href="rtsp://streaming-server-address/sample-movie.sdp">Live 3gpp stream</a></p>
</card>
</wml>

Images

Though generally not encouraged for mobile sites, you can use images. To place images on your WAP site, you must use the .wbmp format. There are many free converters out there, such as WAP Tiger
For example:

<img  src="http://yoursite.com/logo.wbmp" align="middle" height="100" width="100"/>

Tables (not supported by all phones)

If you wish to use tables, there are a few differences between WML and HTML that you must note: First, the tbody tag does not exist in WML. Second, the attributes of the table tag are “title” (the title of the table), “align” (C=center, L=left and R=right) and “columns” (the number of the columns)

<table align="C" title="label" columns="3">
<tr>
<td>col 1</td>
<td>col 2</td>
<td>col 3</td>
</tr>
</table>

Finishing Up

Once you have uploaded your .wml file to your web server, you can direct mobile users to a URL such as “http://www.yoursite.com/your-wap-site.wml”

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.
5. Find this line of code:
   s1.addParam(”flashvars”,”file=video.flv&image=preview.jpg”); and replace it with the following (for FLV files):
   s1.addParam(”flashvars”,”streamer=rtmp://arecibo.gravlab.com/streamingvideo/&file=AccountName/YourFile.flv”);
   OR, if you’re streaming mp4, .mov, or .m4v files, replace that line of code with:
   s1.addParam(”flashvars”,”streamer=rtmp://arecibo.gravlab.com/streamingvideo/&file=mp4:AccountName/YourFile.m4v”);
6. Keep in mind that arecibo.gravlab.com is just one of our servers, and if your files are on a different server, then you will replace arecibo.gravlab.com with servername.gravlab.com. If you need help with this part, contact us and we’ll get you squared away.
7. After you’ve copied and pasted that section of code and customized it to point to our servers, you can save it and view it in your web browser.

1. RTSP/RTP streams use standard IETF streaming protocols to stream video and audio to clients. The Streaming Server supports QuickTime .mov, MPEG-4 .mp4 and 3G .3gp files for on-demand streaming. In addition, the Streaming Server can reflect live streams and playlists using Session Description Protocol .sdp files. Linking to RTSP/RTP streams is described in the Embedding RTSP/RTP Streams section below
2. MP3 streams used the Shoutcast protocol for streaming mp3 files over http. The Streaming Server supports streaming MP3 playlists from locally stored MP3 files and reflecting live MP3 streams from Shoutcast compatible webcasting software. Linking to MP3 playlists and live MP3 webcasts is described in Linking to mp3 streams below.

Embedding RTSP/RTP Streams

RTSP/RTP streams can be embedded in web pages, or played in QuickTime player. The methods for embedding QuickTime Streams presented below require Apple’s new JavaScript Library which can be downloaded here. After the library is downloaded, place it on your web server (the examples below assume that it is placed in the document root of the web server). The library must be referenced in your web page before it can be used. A good place for to reference the library is immediately after the body tag in your html code. For example:

<body>
<script src="/AC_QuickTime.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
</script>
Once you have referenced the library as shown, you can use it to embed QuickTime movies from web or streaming servers. The general format for calling the QuickTime Javascript Library to embed movies is:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
QT_WriteOBJECT('Movie URL','MovieWidth','MovieHeight','ActiveX Version',
'First Attribute Name','First Attribute Value',
'Next Attribute Name','Next Attribute Value',
...repeat attributes as necessary
'Last Attribute Name','Last Attribute Value');
</script>

Specifics of embedding a stream

The Movie URL in the example above should not be the rtsp url to your stream. Instead, the Movie URL should be an http URL to a file on a web server (relative or absolute URLs are OK). This file will be either a poster movie the client clicks on to play the stream, a reference movie to the stream, or a placeholder movie that will be replaced by the stream. These options are described below. The MovieWidth and MovieHeight attributes are measured in pixels. You should add 16 to the height if you want do display the QuickTime playback controller for the movie. ActiveX Version should be left blank. The attribute name value pairs are described in detail on Apple’s site here.

Embedding a stream using a Poster Movie

One way to embed a streaming movie is with a poster movie. The client clicks on the poster movie to start the stream. The poster movie can be a file in any format that QuickTime can open (usually a still image). Poster movies are usually used with the target attribute. Using the target attribute, the movie can play in the same space as the poster movie (target set to ‘myself’) or in QuickTime Player (target set to ‘quicktimeplayer’). The url that plays when the poster movie is clicked is set by the href attribute. The following code is used to create a poster movie that will play the stream in the same space as the poster image (target is set to ‘myself’):

Note: A good format to use for a Poster Movie is a .qtif file. The qtif file format is an image file format that only QuickTime understands, so it is unlikely to be hijacked by other players. In addition, setting the mime type with the ‘type’ attribute to insure the QuickTime plugin will get control. Most image formats can be converted into a qtif files with QuickTime Pro and PictureViewer (Classic Mac OS and Windows) or Preview (Mac OS X). Setting the ‘controller’ attribute to ‘true’ displays only the image without the playback controller. When the user clicks on the picture the controller will be displayed. If you want to keep the controller hidden, the attribute ’saveembedtags’ can be set to ‘true’.

Embedding a stream using a Reference Movie
Another way to embed a streaming movie is with a reference movie. There are a variety of ways to create reference movies, which function like pointers to the actual media. The simplest way to create a reference movie is with QuickTime Pro:

• Open QuickTime Player Pro
• From the File menu select “Open URL…”
• Open the URL to your streaming movie using the rtsp url.
• Save the movie that plays as a Self-Contained movie.
• Put the movie that you saved on your web site.
• Make the reference movie the first attribute you specify in the QT_WriteObject method call.

If you don’t have QuickTime Pro, you can create a simple reference movie with any text editor. Just create a text file with one line in the following format:RTSPtextRTSP:///

Save the file with the .mov extension.

Reference movies can also be used to create “movie alternates.” This sophisticated capability of QuickTime allows you to have a single reference that automatically plays content based on the client’s connection speed, operating system platform, etc. Movie alternates are covered in more detail here.

All reference movies can be embedded by specifying them as the first attribute for the QT_WriteOJECT method. Streaming movies embedded using reference movies are often used with the autoplay attribute set to true. In this case the attribute has been set to false so you can scroll to the movie and press the play button on the controller when you want to view the movie. The following code shows a typical use of a reference movie:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
QT_WriteOBJECT('Merry_Go_Round_Physics.mov','320','256','',
'autoplay','false');
</script>

Embedding a stream using a Placeholder Movie

Sometimes web authors want to embed a movie that plays automatically, but they don’t want to use a reference movie. There are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Use the poster movie technique outlined above, but add the attribute ‘autohref’ with the value ‘true’ to the QT_WriteOJECT method call.
QT_WriteOBJECT('poster.jpg','320','256','', 'href','rtsp://soundscreen.com/Educational/Science/Merry_Go_Round_Physics.mov', 'autohref','true', 'target','myself'); </script> 2. Use the poster movie technique outlined above, but replace the ‘href’ attribute with the attribute ‘qtsrc’ and elminate the ‘target’ attribute. This method ignores the poster movie entirely and loads the url specified by ‘qtsrc’ directly:

Linking to mp3 Streams
Linking to mp3 streams 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:

Play the blues

Note: For .m3u files to work correctly, your web server must be configured to deliver the correct mime type for .m3u files:
audio/x-mpegurl .m3u

Demo source code:

<br /> <object height="320" width="200"><param name="kioskmode" value="true"><param name="src" value="my.mp3"><param name="autoplay" value="false"><param name="controller" value="true"><embed height="50" src="http://dna.gravlab.com/your_audio.mp3" type="video/quicktime" width="200" controller="true" autoplay="false" kioskmode="true"><br /> </object><br />

When converting from a compressed to uncompressed file format (for example, from MP3 to AIFF) you shouldn’t notice any reduction in sound quality. However, when converting between compressed formats (for example MP3 and AAC), you may notice a reduction in the sound quality. For the best results, if you want your music encoded in a different file format, you should import the music again from the original source using the new encoding format.

To convert a song’s file format:

1. Open iTunes Preferences.
   Windows: On the Edit menu, click Preferences.
   Mac: From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.
2. Click the Advanced button, then click the Importing button at the top of the window.
3. From the Import Using pop-up menu, choose the encoding format that you want to convert the song to, then click OK to save the settings.
4. Select one or more songs in your library, then from the Advanced menu, choose one of the following (The menu item changes to show what’s selected in your Importing preferences):
• Convert Selection to MP3
• Convert Selection to AAC
• Convert Selection to AIFF
• Convert Selection to WAV
• Convert Selection to Apple Lossless

To convert all the songs in a folder or on a disk, hold down the Option key and from the Advanced menu, choose Convert Selection to. All the songs in the folder or on the disk will be converted. Some purchased songs are encoded using a protected AAC format that prevents them from being converted. iTunes Plus purchases are not protected and can be converted.

The song in its original format and the newly converted song appear in your library.
About compression

When you convert a song, some data may be lost due to the way certain formats compress data. For this reason these formats are sometimes called “lossy” formats. The advantage of using a “lossy” format is that the file sizes are much smaller, which means you can store more songs in the same amount of disk space. The disadvantage is that the sound quality may not be as good as the original, uncompressed format. Depending on the song, the speakers or headphones, and the player you use to play the song, you may not be able to tell the difference between a compressed “lossy” song and a song that is not compressed.

Once a song is compressed (meaning some of its data is lost) you cannot retrieve the data by uncompressing it. If you convert a song from a “lossy” format to a uncompressed format, the quality of the song will not improve and the file will only take up more disk space. For example, if you convert a song in MP3 format (a compressed format) to AIFF (an uncompressed format) the song will take up much more space on the hard disk, but it will still sound the same as the compressed file. In order to take advantage of uncompressed formats you should only import songs using these formats.

from apple.com

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.

2. On the File menu, click Save, type a file name, type .wvx as the file name extension, and then click Save.
3. Copy the Windows Media metafile with the .wvx file name extension to your Web server.
4. In a Web page, provide a link to the Windows Media metafile.

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

In short, the way everything about your site is calculated has changed however if we pay attention to what has changed in each area we’ll quickly see how to optimize a site and equally important, we’ll see what Google is trying to accomplish with this update. I state that this as equally important in that understanding what Google is hoping to accomplish will help us take measures now to protect our rankings during future updates. We will cover this further below in the conclusion.

The History Of Your Web Pages

The history of your website and in fact, the individual pages within it are playing an increasingly important role in your site’s ability to rank well. The longer your site has been online the better your chances of ranking highly. Further, the longer a specific internal page has been live the better it will rank for additional phrases.

What this means to you is that you will have to take into account the length of time your domain has been around when you set your expectations regarding which phrases you should be ranking for. In the beginning of a promotion you will not want to target an intensely competitive phrase with hopes of attaining it on Google; rather you will want to select less competitive secondary phrases that contain the primary phrase (seo services vs. guaranteed seo services for example) and optimize for that. What you will accomplish is rankings on Google for at least a relevant phrase while at the same time building links with relevancy for your primary phrase which you will rank well for once your website has gained history.

The less competitive the phrase, the more weight the other factors will have on your ability to rank highly. History is only one factor among many. For highly competitive phrases where you are competing with sites that have history and have also addressed the other factors noted below you will find it extremely difficult to outrank them, however for less competitive phrases the other factors will hold more weight in that the other sites will likely not be optimized as strongly for them and thus, your site stands a much better chance of beating them out.

The Way Backlinks Are Counted

Similar to the history of your site, the history of the links to your site have gained importance. As was noted in Google’s patent application #20050071741 titled, Information retrieval based on historical data, links, like sites, gain weight over time. This point was further clarified in the latest update as sites with longstanding links gained strength while sites with many new links did not see significant ground gained. The sandbox on links is functioning in fractions in that after a period of time a link will gain part of it’s weight, after a bit longer, it will gain more, etc. (the exact length of time is of course a closely guarded secret by Google and likely changes as their algorithm does). This means your link building today won’t create any substantial effect on your Google rankings until months down the road.

Additionally, the relevancy of links to your site is still important however Google’s ability to determine relevancy appears to have improved. Pages no longer have to containing the exact keyword phrases to be relevant but rather have to be from related industries. For example, a link to an SEO site from a web design site would be considered relevant even though the keywords on the page are not specifically related to SEO.

Natural links have gained weight over unnatural links. Links that are contained within content areas of a page will be weighted more strongly that links that appear alone or in a directory-style (like reciprocal links pages) as they are considered more natural. When you are having links built to your site try to get them placed within the content (within the description portion of your reciprocal link for example). Also, in link building you will want to insure you’re varying the terms of your anchor text. Creating hundreds of links with identical anchor text will quickly be detected as a link building effort (i.e. not natural) and thus will carry little weight. Different anchor text for your links will appear more natural and thus will have a more positive impact on your rankings.

Site Content & Structure

The optimal keyword density doesn’t appear to have changed but rather appears to have declined in value altogether. Sites with low keyword densities are starting to appear more often for phrases based more on their links than their content and also overall site relevancy.

While the importance of a specific keyword density on a page has declined, this has been countered by an increasing importance of relevancy throughout the site. Google is opting to assign relevancy based more on the overall content of the site rather than a single page. General directories will be showing up less and less in exchange for topic-specific directories. Additionally, sites with a central theme carried throughout the majority of pages will tend to rank over sites with a specific page or even section on a topic.

Internal links are carrying a solid weight in attaching relevancy to specific internal pages. Properly worded internal links, preferably built into the content of your site (see note on natural links above) will add weight to those internal pages and increase the likelihood of those pages ranking for specific secondary phrases.
Conclusion

While this update has caused a panic among some SEOs it is clear to see what Google is looking to accomplish with it. By placing significant weight on the age of domains and links they have reduced the effectiveness of buying multiple domains to links together (easier to buy one and spend your time promoting it) and it has also reduced the value of paid links in that the buyer will have to pay for the link for months before the full weight is assigned. In some cases this may cost hundreds or thousands of dollars simply waiting for the link to gain any real value.

Additionally, by considering the overall relevancy of a site vs. the relevancy of a specific page they are allowing relevant sites to rank highly even if the content is created to be appealing to the human visitor over the search engine spider. This move helps to weed out less relevant pages from appearing and increasing the likelihood that a searcher will find what they’re looking for in the results. A site with more pages of content on a specific topic is more likely to provide the information being sought than a site with a single page on the topic or a page of links.

While not perfect this update has done a lot to address a number of serious issues with Google’s results. To be certain, there is still room for improvement in cleaning out spam results however they are definitely moving in the right direction. But what does this mean for us?

For those seeking high rankings on Google this update and the direction it predicts for future updates indicates that clean tactics will be necessary. Spam is becoming less-and-less effective and its detection is becoming stronger and stronger (though certainly not perfect at this point). Building solid, natural links and creating a site with a lot of useful, relevant information will win out in the end though the aging delays on both domains and links mean you will have to be dedicated to the task. And this is the environment Google is hoping to attain, dedicated webmasters creating larger, more relevant sites with natural links. Mission accomplished.

from http://www.evolt.org/node/60553

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

<OBJECT id="VIDEO" width="320" height="240" CLASSID="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" type="application/x-oleobject"><br /> <PARAM NAME="URL" VALUE="your_video_url_here"><br /> <PARAM NAME="SendPlayStateChangeEvents" VALUE="True"><br /> <PARAM NAME="AutoStart" VALUE="True"><br /> <PARAM name="uiMode" value="none"><br /> <PARAM name="PlayCount" value="9999"><br /> </OBJECT><br />

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

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.
2. From the File menu, choose Export.
3. From the Export pop-up menu, choose Movie to QuickTime Movie.
4. Choose a streaming option from the Use pop-up menu.
5. Click Options and select the “Prepare for Internet Streaming” checkbox.
6. Choose Hinted Streaming from the pop-up menu and click OK.
7. Click Save.
8. Upload your video to your account
9. Link to your video through QTSS via the 554 port using the instructions sent to your account

If you want to stream a QuickTime movie using QuickTime Streaming Server, you should use a web-optimized video or audio compressor to compress the movie file. All QuickTime compressors are compatible with QuickTime Streaming Server, but the compressors listed below are optimized to give the best results for delivery over the Internet.

For a complete list of QuickTime-supported compressors, see the Products area on the QuickTime website.

Video compressors
H.264, MPEG-4, Sorenson Video (any version), H.263, H.261

Audio compressors
AAC, QUALCOMM PureVoice, AMR, QDesign

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://your_media_url/sample.mp3

Repeat for each mp3 you want to add
http://your_media_url/sample.mp3
http://your_media_url/sample.mp3
http://your_media_url/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)

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

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.