Welcome, fellow RealPlayer devoters. Here I'll tell you about RealPlayer tips I've learned over time.
Pretext
In order to bring order to the chaos we call the internet, I've decided to put up some guidelines to name RealPlayer files by.
More often than not I find people naming RealPlayer extensions without any reasons. The following are common recognized RealPlayer extension:
*.rm
*.ra
*.ram
It's so hard for me to tell, these days, whether an extension means streaming media or a download. So I decided to try to spread around some media guidelines. This is how it works:
*.rm - RealMedia. This is for audio/video presentations. Used alone this cannot be streamed.
*.ra - RealAudio. For audio presentations (such as music). Alone this cannot be streamed.
*.ram - This seemed like the logical choice for what I did with it. Use this to stream media (check Lesson 3 for instructions).
Lesson 1: Making Content
RealProducer starts off our wonderous journey into media creation. It bares a hefty price, so be sure you can cough it up. I find that Smooth Motion is much better than Sharpest Picture when encoding.
Note: RealProducer will automatically save the content as *.rm. Change this to *.ra if you've made an audio file.
Lesson 2: What Now?
Well, RealProducer is good because it has the unique ability to split the size of a file in half without sacraficing much image quality. If you've been looking to shrink media, this is a good program to use.
If you want to make some streaming content (like me), you're gonna want to encode in 56k. This is what the general population is using. Then find a good web server to put it on (Angelfire is a nice one).
The below explanation doesn't work. E-mail me if you know why.
Lesson 3: the RAM file
Now to stream the media. Make sure the media is encoded at a speed your audience can watch (commonly 56Kbps for video, 20Kbps for audio). Now for the file coding.
To code the RAM file, just open notepad. Type the URL of the file and save it as something.ram (it goes without saying that 'something' can be renamed, but I'll say it anyway).
For the URL, use one of the following examples:
For single files, type something like "http://www.domain.com/media.rm". Change it to media.ra if you're using audio files.
For multiple files that you want to use in a single presentation (normally audio files), use the following coding:
http://www.domain.com/media1.ra
http://www.domain.com/media2.ra
http://www.domain.com/media3.ra
And so on...
If there are any problems or any new ideas I don't have here, e-mail me at psycoquack@hotmail.com.