MultiMedia Applications:

1. Overview of QuickTime
2. Can I stream QuickTime from my web pages?
3. Adding a hint track with QuickTime Player (Pro version)
4. Streaming media files with multiple sources.
5. What do I need to make QuickTime for my web site?
6. Where do I get QuickTime?
7. How do I use the Quick Time Streaming Server (QTSS).
8. Embedding Quick Time for web delivery.
9. Helpful streaming links and sources.

1. Overview of MP3
2. Does ABHost.Net allow MP3 files?
3. Can I use my Anonymous FTP account for direct MP3 downloads?
4. Can I have an MP3 distribution website?
5. Are MP3 files allowed and recognized on sub-domain accounts?
6. Can I have copyrighted MP3s on my account if I have written permission?

1. Overview of QuickTime

QuickTime is Apple's complete technology for handling video, sound, animation, graphics, text, music, and even 360-degree virtual reality (VR) scenes. A gateway for rich media including images, music, MIDI, MP3, Flash, AVI and WAV files, text tracks, sprites and more. QuickTime lets you experience more than 200 kinds of digital media with your Mac or PC and it offers unparalleled quality, ease of use and functionality.

QuickTime is rapidly becoming the most popular distributed media technology for Windows and Mac OS–based computers. There are over 25 million QuickTime users. It is the hottest streaming technology on the Internet and has been in use since 1991. QuickTime is enabling the very best content the web has to offer.

QuickTime Streaming Server lets you start up a streaming digital video channel with news, entertainment, and education programming on the Internet. QuickTime Streaming Server 2 can serve over 2,000 streams to QuickTime 4 users, reliably delivering high-quality broadcasts. And since Apple is committed to making the QuickTime Streaming Server source code available to whomever wants to improve it, the technology will continue to evolve thanks to the applied collective brain power of the open source community.

There are basically two types of streaming HTTP streaming and RTP/RTSP streaming and QuickTime does them both.

HTTP streaming works by downloading an entire movie to your hard disk. QuickTime has supported this for over a year. QuickTime streaming files formatted for HTTP via the Apache Server work so well on both Macs and PCs that in addition to a large Macintosh user base QuickTime streaming has attracted millions of Windows users as well. Fact is, the quality of this QuickTime streaming is one of the reasons why the release of the Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace trailer turned into the biggest online download event in history.

Just-in-time streaming RTSP (for real-time streaming protocol) is a just-in-time streaming technology that keeps your computer in constant touch with the server running the movie. Digital data is transferred and displayed and discarded once you've seen it. Though a 3-10 second cache of data is stored to compensate for occasional network “burps” that might otherwise compromise quality, at no point is the entire movie stored on your computer.

The difference? HTTP streaming is great for short movies and anything else you intend to play over and over again. RTSP streaming, on the other hand, is ideal for full-length movies and live events. With a combination of industry-standard streaming protocols and cutting-edge compression technologies, QuickTime 4 delivers perfectly synchronized audio and video streams.

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2. Can I stream QuickTime from my web pages.

Yes you can stream any hinted QuickTime media file. Hint tracks contain information the streaming server needs to stream the media properly. Most authoring applications let you export media as a hinted QuickTime movie. You can also hint a movie using the Pro version of QuickTime Player. After the movie is hinted, copy it to the "qtss" media folder on your website. If you do have a qtss directory at your document root location send mail to support asking that we configure Quick Time for your account.

Note: A QuickTime movie does not need to have a video track. It can consist only of audio. For example, any sound track can be encoded as a QuickTime movie.

Each track in a media file must have its own hint track. For example, a movie with one audio and one video track must have two hint tracks: one for the audio track and one for the video track.

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3. Adding a hint track with QuickTime Player (Pro version)

You can use the Pro version of QuickTime Player on most Mac OSbased and Windows-based computers. Check the QuickTime Web site for information on system requirements and installation instructions for QuickTime Pro.

When you use QuickTime Player to export a movie as a hinted movie, QuickTime adds the appropriate number of hint tracks automatically.

To export a QuickTime movie as a hinted movie:

1 Open the Pro version of QuickTime Player on a Mac OSbased or Windows-based computer.
2 Choose Export from the File menu.
3 Choose "Movie to Hinted Movie" from the pop-up menu, then type a new file name.
4 Click Options in the export dialog box.
5 Select Optimize Hints For Server.
6 Click OK.
7 Click Save.

For detailed information on hinting movies, see the following site: QuickTime authoring Web site www.apple.com/quicktime/authoring/ .

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4. Streaming media files with multiple sources.

QuickTime movies often consist of content from several media files. For example, a video clip might be combined with music from one or more CD tracks. When you export a QuickTime movie, you should make it a "self-contained" file so that it includes all the sources.

To stream movies that are not self-contained, you must copy all the files needed by the movie to the same location. Store all the files in the media folder you specified in you html.

You do have to stay within the bound of our Terms Of Service. Please respect all international copyrights and do not distribute work that is not your own or work of which you do not have permission to freely distribute.

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5. What do I need to make QuickTime for my web site?

You will at the very lest need a current copy QuickTime Pro. It is very affordable (under $30) as well as easy to use.

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6. Where do I get QuickTime?

The Apple Computer site has a download available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/. Apple's QuickTime 4 Authoring pages have lots of HTML, Plugin and Reference movie examples. Please make sure to visit Apple.Com for technical support of Apple products.

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7. How do I use the Quick Time Streaming Server (QTSS).

0) Place the hinted sample movie in your qtss folder. When you first login via FTP you will see the "qtss" directory. The qtss directory should be where you can see your public_html directory (this is the root level of your web space). If you do not have a qtss directory at that location send mail to support asking that we configure the Quick Time Streaming Server for your account:

(i.e.. /username/qtss/sample.mov)

1) From a MacOS or Windows client run QuickTime 4 Player

2) Under the File menu, select "Open URL in New Player..."

3) In the URL space provided, enter the following:

rtsp://your-domain.com:554/username/sample.mov

4) Click

5) The movie should indicate it is connecting, negotiating, buffering, and then it should start playing.

To show the movie in a Web Browser, you then need to do the following:

6) From the File Menu in QT Player Pro, select "Save As..."

7) In the Save dialog window, select "Make movie self-contained"

8) Name the file something like "sample_ref.mov"

9) Save it on your desktop

10) Using FTP client software, upload the file "sample_ref.mov" into the users public_html folder:

(ie. /username/public_html/sample_ref.mov)

11) Now, create an HTML document that references the "sample_ref.mov" (via HTTP/Apache), like this:

Make a html file named - index.html. The index.html file would then include something like the following EMBED SRC tag

12) Now, to view the content in a Web Browser, a person simply loads the Web Page containing the <embed src="..."> tag.

(Web Browser) htp://www.some-domain.com/index.html

The QuickTime Sample movie should load and be able to RTSP stream the file via QTSS.

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8. Embedding Quick Time for web delivery.

If you would like to see a complete listing/definitions of embed tags go the apple embed page.

The following text is from the apple site and is provided here for a quick reference.

The

The Basic Necessities
The

For example:

The SRC attribute is the media file to display either by an absolute or relative URL. The HEIGHT attribute specifies the vertical size in pixels of the SRC attribute. The WIDTH attribute specifies its horizontal size.

IMPORTANT
In order for the controller to appear properly, add 16 pixels to the height of a movie.

For example, set HEIGHT="256" for a movie 240 pixels high:

For a sound-only movie, use a height of 16 for the controller and any width that looks good on your Web page. (If you set the width to 16 for a sound-only movie, the controller is minimized to a single Play/Pause button.)

For example:

Never set HEIGHT or WIDTH to less than 2, even if the movie is hidden.

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9. Helpful streaming links and sources.

Check out Sorenson Broadcaster at www.s-vision.com. They have a product called Sorenson Broadcaster which works great with QTSS for doing live-webcasting. They have a nice tutorial online for live broadcasting with QTSS:

http://www.sorenson.com/SorensonBroadcaster/tutorial/page01.html

Terran is another company that has a great product called Media Cleaner Pro which is a tool for compressing high resolution video down to something which is streamable on the web (i.e.. 28kbit, 40kbit, 80kbit, 120kbit, 300kbit, 600kbit, 1200kbit, etc.)

http://www.terran.com/info/index.html

The QTSS streaming server is actually just the _last_ step along the line in producing great high quality streaming web video. Using the wrong tools (i.e. just QT4 Pro), or else the right tools in inexperienced-hands can also result in poor looking video quality

Another great tool for creating complex QuickTime Reference movies (with interactivity, wired-sprites, hot-spots, etc.) is LiveStage by Totally Hip Software. Here are some tutorials which they have on their site:

http://www.totallyhip.com/lsdn/Documentation/tutorials.html

Apple also has a page showing lots of available QuickTime tools:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/authoring/

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1. Overview of MP3

MP3, or MPEG Layer 3, allows for CD-quality sound files at very high compression. Compared to .wav files, MP3 require approximately 1/20th of the space for the same quality of sound.

Because of these characteristics, MP3 has become a widely accepted, standard setting file format for encoding music.ABHost.Net allows clients to have MP3 files on their accounts. However, MP3s must not infringe on anyone's copyrights.

While MP3s have become very popular, they have also been abused by persons by means of music piracy. Please ensure that any MP3s on your account have encoded content owned by you or your organization.

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2. Does ABHost.Net allow MP3 files?

Yes, as long as the encoded content does not infringe upon anyone else's copyrights.

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3. Can I use my Anonymous FTP account for direct MP3 downloads?

Yes, as long as the MP3s are in accordance with our Acceptable Uses Policy. In short, your account cannot be used for the primary purpose of file distribution, including MP3 distribution. MP3s available for download may not be copyrighted, except by the owner of the site.

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4. Can I have an MP3 distribution website?

Unfortunately, this type of website does not cohere with our Acceptable Uses Policy, given the primary purpose would be MP3 file distribution. Therefore, we do not allow MP3 distribution websites.

It is important to note the difference between having MP3s on your website limited to your copyrighted material and having a site dedicated to downloading an assortment of MP3 files that have suspect copyright issues or not belonging to you.

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5. Are MP3 files allowed and recognized on sub-domain accounts?

Yes, there is no difference between MP3 files on your virtual domain and those which are on your sub-domain accounts.

We allow MP3s to reside on sub-domains, and we have the MIME types setup in the webserver for full recognition of MP3 files.

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6. Can I have copyrighted MP3s on my account if I have written permission?

No, ABHost.Net does not allow copyrighted MP3s on its servers, even with written permission from the copyright holder. This would be a violation of our Acceptable Uses Policy.

Exception: if the copyright for the MP3 is held by the owner of the virtual domain hosted on ABHost.Net web servers, this would not be a violation.

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