: Real Server Audio and Video

RealAudio and RealVideo refers to a client-server based system which allows web sites to deliver compressed pre-recorded and live audio or video data ("streaming") to multimedia computers with a Real Player (download a copy of the Real Player). The Player continuously decompresses the audio/video streams and then plays them in real-time, on demand. Unique flow control technology allows computer users with sound cards to listen to whole clips, or just sections, when they want, as often as they want.

For complete details on creating Real content on your web site, visit Real Networks at http://www.realnetworks.com/

Because Speedsoft allows you to run RealAudio or RealVideo free of charge, Speedsoft does not offer technical support for the products. If you experience any problems with the RealServer, you should obtain technical support directly from the vendor of the product, Real Networks. Real Networks provides online assistance including Product Manuals and a Tech Support Knowledge Base.

• Streaming Pre-Recorded Files
• Streaming Live Broadcasts
• What's Included in our Real Server?

Streaming Pre-Recorded Files

To have Real Audio on your site, you will need two things.

1. The .rm source file, created/encoded with the Real Producer or your favorite high-end sound program.  The encoder is not a free program and is available at http://www.real.com.

2. A .ram metafile which points to the .rm file.

Real Producer will create your HTML for you, but if you want to know the details of what the metafile should look like, read on.

The .ram metafile is a one line text file which contains the URL of your Real media file. Here are the contents of an example metafile, testing.ram:

rtsp://YOURDOMAIN:8080/YOURROOTDIR/sounds/testing.ra

For example, if your domain name was "mymusicsite.com" and your user directory was "fred01" and your sound files were in a subdirectory named "sound", your .ram file would contain:

rtsp://mymusicsite.com:8080/fred01/sound/testing.ra

Notice, it uses the "rtsp" prefix rather than "http".  This instructs the server to stream the content using the Real Server, rather than using standard HTTP. The .ram metafile must be named with a .ram extension, like testing.ram. Then, link to the .ram file:

<a href="sound/testing.ram">My Test Music</a> *Newly Recorded!*

So the user clicks a link to the testing.ram text file, then the server is instructed to look for and play/stream the testing.ra Real music file.

Streaming Live Broadcasts

Setup your Real Producer to broadcast live audio or video per the Real Producer documentation.  The setup information you will need is as follows.

RealServer: YOURDOMAIN (where YOURDOMAIN is something like mymusicsite.com)
Server Port: 4040
Filename: testing.rm (or whatever you want the live broadcast to be referenced by)
Username: email support@speedsoft.com for username and password
Password: email for password

Then to link to the live broadcast, make your .ram file point to rtsp://YOURDOMAIN:5540/encoder/testing.rm.

What is Included in our Real Server?