|
|
Posted by cwdjrxyz on 08/17/06 16:32
Cerebral Believer wrote:
> I should have explained, the .mp3's and .ram's will be available to download
> and purchase also. I thought it would be sensible to supply them in a
> format compatible with most media players, including hardware players.
I think that you need to use either a .rm Real file with associated
..ram playlist file or a .wma file with associated .wax playlist file
for playing free samples on the web. You will have to decide if you
want to use a low enough bit rate to be played on dialup with some loss
of quality or a higher bit rate for quality on broadband. Both formats
will stream, provided you code correctly and install the correct mime
types for the 4 extension types mentioned on the server, if they are
not yet installed on it. For music to sell, I think you need to use a
high bit rate mp3 for quality, since nearly everyone interested in
music can play mp3s and they can be easily copied to various portable
consumer mp3 players that many people have. The music to be streamed is
easily embedded on the main page so that you do not jump to a player
page everytime a song is selected to play, and this is the way most
large commercial sites that stream samples and sell music do it. It is
possible to write valid objects for both .rm and .wma for embedding the
music on the page, and I can supply the code, if you need it.
The new video service by Google is an example of how media now is often
streamed and sold. Google has their own player that has to be
downloaded, but this would not be practical for a small service. When
you select a free video, the entire video or a sample is displayed in a
player window on the main Google page without jumping to the Google
player. They often use flash for this degraded streaming sample.
However, if you want to keep the video, you save it to the Google
player. This actually is a link to a Google server that usually is an
..avi for much higher quality than the .swf sample streamed online, and
it is of much larger file size.
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|