RealMedia brings on-demand multimedia content delivery to
World Wide Web sites. With most media formats, a user has to wait
for an entire file to download, something which often takes several
minutes, before playing any of it. The RealMedia system works differently,
by using "streaming" technology to begin playing the file within
seconds, since the file is not actually saved to the end user's
computer. Instead, a "metafile" is used to call the file from our
RealServer. MultiMedia presentations can be delivered on demand,
in pop-up applications or embedded in the webpage itself. Our Developer
Series platform has the RealServer G2 installed which supports multi-bitrate
streaming. This allows your audio or video file to stream at the
best possible quality supported by the viewer's software
and Internet connection.
Note: EarthLink does not support streaming a live broadcast
To add RealMedia to your Web site:
FTP to your Web Hosting account with your userID and
password.
Upload your RealMedia file to the
realaudio directory in your home directory.
Create a metafile. Use a text editor like Notepad or
SimpleText, or the
File Manager tool in your
Control Panel, to create a text file, filename.ram, containing the following
line:
rtsp://realaudio2.mindspring.com/webhost/wwwXXXXX/filename
.rm
In these examples, wwwXXXXX represents your Web Hosting account
userID and filename represents the name of your RealMedia file ending
with .ra or .rm. Your Web Hosting ID may be in the form www12345,
wfp12345, or w1234567. Save this text file with the same file name
as your RealMedia file, ending with an extension of .ram. If you
use our sample audio file kosmos.rm, your metafile would be saved
as kosmos.ram.
Upload your .ram file somewhere in your www directory.
Be sure to upload your file in ascii mode.
Create a link to the metafile (the .ram file) on your
web page as:
<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever.ram">Listen!</a>
Note: Metafiles cannot be served through the secure server.
There are three basic reasons a RealMedia stream would fail:
-
The link to the .ram file
is incorrect.
Check the link to the .ram file just like
you would any other link. The reference can be either absolute or
relative. As with any other <a href> tag, the
file names are case sensitive and the path to the file including
subdirectories must be precise. View the source for the page calling
up the .ram file and verify the validity of the link. Check the
directory structure to ensure the .ram file exists with the correct
file name, in the correct directory called for in the <a
href> tag. An incorrect link to the ram file will cause
a 404 File Not Found error.
-
The .ram file does not properly call the
file through the RealServer.
If the .ram file does not
properly call up the .rm file, the Real Player will open and then
display an error message. Typical messages you may see include "Unable
to locate server" or "Requested file not found". View the contents
of the .ram file to ensure it follows the correct format outlined
above. You should normally use the rtsp:// protocol.
For "server not found" errors, check for a proper server name in
the .ram. This should be realaudio2.mindspring.com. If the protocol
and server name is correct, and you are still getting "Unable to
Locate server" errors, you may be having a DNS issue.
The section of the .ram file after the
server name is the path to the file. RealMedia files should be placed
in the realaudio directory at the root level of your web directory.
The correct path in the metafile would be /webhost/www#####/filename.rm,
where www##### represents
your web hosting user id. The path and file names are case sensitive.
-
The media file is not a valid RealMedia
format.
Only files encoded using a RealMedia format can
be streamed through the RealServers. The most common file extensions
you will see will be .rm or .ra. Trying to play other media types
will result in an error, such as "The server is not configured to
play the media type you requested". If the file is in the correct
location, and appears to be a valid file type, download it to your
local machine and try to open it with RealPlayer. The file may not
have been encoded properly, or perhaps it became corrupted during
transfer to the server.
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