How to Create Streaming Real Audio and Video
What You Need
For Sound:
A computer that has a sound card with a microphone input. Most computers today come with one.
Or, a CDROM that allows you to play music CDs.
For Video:
A digital camera (costs about 600mk for a cheap color camera).
You can also use your home video camera if you purchase a capture card.
A capture card is more expensive than the camera, but the quality of video will be much better.
Software:
To encode your files you will need the RealEncoder from RealNetworks. The basic version is free and allows you to convert your files. The pay for version adds some features but is really not necessary if you follow the instructions here.
Download and install the Encoder.
You, and your users, will also need the RealPlayer if you are to listen to any of these files.
The Process
Recording the Content
First you need to record your content. If you are using sound from your microphone and video from your camera, it is no problem to use on of the Encoder's wizards to walk you through the process.
However, recording from your CD can be problematic, as it is dependent on how your computer is set up.
For CD recording you need to use another program to record the CD track you want and then open that file in the Encoder to transform it into a RealMedia file.
The RM File
The file that is created when you use the RealEncoder will have the extension .rm.
Once you have your recorded material it is just a matter of importing that .rm file into the FrontPage Explorer and then creating a third file that requests that Real media file.
To import your file to the FrontPage Explorer, either drag it from the folder where you saved the file or use the import feature of FrontPage to import that file.
Referencing the File
Once you have the file imported, you need to create a third file with notepad (not in FrontPage) that requests that file when the user clicks on a link. That file must be named with the extension .ram.
That file contains just the full url reference to the real media file. The
Welcome message on my Home Page is called by the file real_welcome.ram contains the
following reference:
https://members.tripod.com/david_hkol/welcome.rm
Putting it Together
Your file will look the same. You will replace the david_hkol with your user name on Tripod and the /welcome.rm with the name of the file you created with the RealEncoder.
Once you have that file created you need to import it into your FrontPage Explore. Again either drag it into the Explorer or use the import function under File.
The last step is to put the link to the file on your page. There are actually two links you need to insert on your page in order for this to work. The first link, links to your .ram file and the second links to your .rm file.
Putting it Together
In my welcome example it looks like this in HTML:
<a HREF="real_welcome.ram">Voice Welcome</a><a
href="welcome.rm"> </a>
You can insert this using the Insert Hyperlink function. First, highlight the word you wish to link and select the .ram file from the Hyperlink box. Then place one space after your link, and carefully highlight that space with your mouse and link that single space to the second .rm file. If this is not working, go in and edit your HTML code by hand and put in by hand a link like the one I have above.