Home ·· News Room ·· Prints ·· Licensing ·· Gallery ·· About Us ·· Contact Us ·· Articles ·· Services Progressive download Quicktime viewing and real-time streaming on a website August 4, 2006
	Getting streaming to work on a Darwin Streaming server for Quicktime files Getting streaming to work on a website can be a challenge, as we discovered. We are currently using Westhost to host our website and have been quite happy with them. They support Quicktime streaming via Darwin Streaming Server and RealPlayer Streaming Server. We will only cover Darwin used in progressive download in this article. First, what is progressive download? It is one of three ways to watch or receive movies over the Web. The first way is standard file download where you have to wait for the entire movie file to download on your computer before you can view it. The second way is to progressively download and view the videos. This is called "Fast Start" in Quicktime lingo. The file is still downloaded to the user's computer but it is played while the file is being downloaded. The third type is real-time streaming where the file is never stored on the user's computer but only played through it in semi-real-time. The impetus for this article came when we were attempting to set up progressive download (hereafter called "streaming") of some of our video clips from North Africa. We used the same HTML code on our website as another site we administer but the streaming was not functioning correctly. The playback was working in the traditional download and wait approach. When visitors were trying viewing the movie clips, they left the page before the movie started because there is no obvious indication that something is happening. So the users then clicked on the "Download here" link and again nothing appeared to happen. There is a small indicator in the lower left hand corner of the Internet Explorer window indicating something is happening. However, virtually all Web users do not see this indicator and move on, thinking nothing is happening. See figures 1 and 2 for these indicators. Figure 1. The waiting to download page items icon in the lower right hand corner of Internet Explorer Figure 2. The waiting to download a file icon in the lower right hand corner of Internet Explorer To circumvent this problem, we loaded the Darwin Streaming Server into our webhost application program list. This was the first step into getting streaming to work on our site. Each webhost may have a different procedure for setting this up and you will have to refer to their documentation. The Quicktime movie file has to be loaded into the /usr/movies directory and a shortcut link created in the domain management section of your webhost. Once that is done, some code has to be added to the web page that the movie is going to be streamed on. Here is that code: <!-- Streaming video section --> &lt;<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" WIDTH="640" HEIGHT="495" CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab#version=6,0,2,0"> <param name="src" value="http://www.aaronlinsdau.com/movies/100_10705.MOV"> <PARAM name="AUTOPLAY" VALUE="true"> <PARAM name=kioskmode value="false"> <PARAM name=cache value="false"> <PARAM name="CONTROLLER" VALUE="TRUE"> <PARAM name="TYPE" VALUE="video/quicktime"> <PARAM name="PLUGINSPAGE" VALUE="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/indext.html"> <PARAM name="target" VALUE="myself"> <embed width="640" height="495" src="http://www.aaronlinsdau.com/movies/100_10705.MOV" target="myself" controller="true" type="video/quicktime" autoplay="true" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/indext.html" cache=false kioskmode=false> </OBJECT> We will not go into the details of what this means because it is not our objective of this article. It is only necessary to change the size, file name and home URL. We took this code from the examples provided by WestHost and modified them to work on our site. The movie file created out of the digital Kodak camera does not have Fast Start checked and so it cannot be streamed. Having Fast Start enabled in a Quicktime file is essential for progressive download and real-time streaming media. The file has to be "Save as..." and then Save as a self-contained movie with type Movies. This enables streaming of the movie file. Once this is done, upload your HTML page and the movie to their correct location and you will have progressive download streaming video on your website!
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