using streaming audio and video on sunsite


First encode your files in Real formats and upload them to your id's html directory or a subdirectory within html on login.sunsite.unc.edu as binary files.

You can get the various encoders from Real at:
http://www.real.com/encoder/index.html

SunSITE is using the latest RealServer (5.0) so the latest encoder will
work fine with the server.

The following has been adapted for sunsite from the notes of Gary Geisler who has a very nice write up explaining the relationship between the Real server and the httpd (aka WWW server).
You can find it at: http://ils.unc.edu/~geisg/310/examples.htm

Creating Links To RealAudio (and RealVideo) Files

After your .ra files are in a html directory, you need to create a pointer
file (.ram) to point to a specific .ra or .rm file, and add a link to your
web page that points to the .ram file. Here's what you need to do: 

    1.Use a text editor such as pico to create a .ram file. For example,
      enter pico example.ram from a command line. 

    2.Enter a line that refers to the URL of the .ra or .rm  file, using
      pnm (the RealAudio/RealVideo server protocol) rather than http. 
       For example,
       if you have a sound file called example.ra in your html/sounds
       directory, you would enter
       pnm://audio.sunsite.unc.edu/<your id>/sounds/example.ra 
       or
        if you have a video files called example.rm in your html/video
        directory, you would enter
        pnm://video.sunsite.unc.edu/<your id>/video/example.rm

    3.Save the .ram file 

    4.Create a link on your web page that refers to the example.ram file.
      
That's all you need to do. The .ram file can contain multiple lines that
refer to different .ra files, so you could, for instance, play
example.ra, example2.ra, example3.ra sequentially from the same link. 

Keep in mind the following if you are having problems getting your
RealAudio/RealVideo files to work: 

       Make sure you've given the necessary permissions (chmod 755 or
       chmod +rx) to the directory, .rm and .ra files 

       The .ram files can't be easily reloaded in a web browser, so if
       you're editing a .ram file, reloading it and it won't work
       when you think it should, try clearing the cache and then reloading
       it.