Re: Looping A Playlist With Files And Link REMOTELY Hosted

On Mon, 22 May 2006 16:33:00 -0600, Pat Cook <pchamster@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Actually, Dreamhosts do pretty cheap web hosting with massive amounts
of storage (several hundred MB for low double figures) *and* you can
use their Darwin streaming server to punt out streamed, seekable
quicktime video. Just a thought if you're limited for $$ and space.

Umm...In case you've forgotten, this is a MICROSOFT newsgroup. :) As
such, I would think discussion of anything associated with Apple would
be considered off topic. :)


Anything to do with money is surely on-topic if you can't afford to
colocate your own hardware and a WS2003 enterprise licence to go on it

You may have missed some subtleties here (I noted your ;-) BTW

(1) The newsgroups are initiated from the microsoft.* nntp domain
that's true - but they are replicated across multiple news servers,
such as the ones owned by my ISP, telewest.

(2) I think you missed the point of what MVP means, I don't work for
or specifically recommend MS as any better solution than any other
provider - if Apple fits then do Apple, especially if you can get a
good deal.

Check http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs Q1-5, Q8 and Q20

Besides, if I just wanted to VideoCast it, I could just as easily
provide a link to it like an ordinary blog entry. But since this is a
different concept of streaming video, videocasting as we've come to know
it over the last several months just simply wouldn't work.

Is it possible to loop a playlist (i.e. it DOES NOT start from the
beginning when a visitor logs onto the page) on a web server? If so,


Give me an example and I'll give you one.
Here's one which does loop, but from the beginning :

<asx version="3.0">
<repeat>
<entry>
<ref href="http://server/track1.wmv"; />
</entry>
<entry>
<ref href="http://server/track2.wmv"; />
</entry>
</repeat>
</asx>

I'm not sure what you're asking other than that - clue me in.

You've got the idea, but I don't want it to start from the beginning
beyond the one time when everything goes online. After that, it should
be an endless loop. .

what do I change (other than the source file link, which will no doubt
be either an ASX or M3U file following the HTTP protocol rather than the
MMS protocol) in the HTML code of the viewer so that it does this?


OK you lost me know I'm not sure what you're getting at - do you know
why you mentioned all those acronyms, or are they just stuff you heard
somewhere ? How do they relate to the problem you're describing ?

Well live video uses the MMS protocol, doesn't it? But since we're
talking about archived video here, and since the web servers don't use
Windows Media Encoder (At least none I'm aware of), the videos would
have to be streamed using the HTTP protocol, would they not?

I think it would be helpful if you could provide a step by step list
of what actions should happen, from when a visitor first arrives at
your website, up to the last frame of video or note of audio they
experience.

Simple. Once the visitor logs on, the visitor, after the usual brief
buffering period, would start receiving the video at whatever point it
happens to be at (be it in the middle, at the beginning, or at the end
of one clip headed toward the start of the next one). The video would
stop playing in the usual manner Windows Media operates once a visitor
logs off or they click on the stop button.

I know that all the files would have to be uploaded and the link file
would have to have the entire list, complete with actual URL, and it too
will have to be uploaded. This is no problem at all. I just need to
know what to change in the code for the embedded viewer (Since I do not

In the page below, both the filename and src param/attributes ought to
point to somewhere on your web server hosting the ASX file eg
http://www.freewebtown.com/myplaylist.asx

Of course. I know this part. :)

However it's important to ensure with your web host that your web
server sends the correct content-type for the ASX file, which is
video/x-ms-asf

My web host is equipped to handle all kinds of streaming media (even the
most modern ones and source videos such as AVI and MPEG-1 and 2). All I
have to do is make sure everything is on the server.

own all the videos, but rather have permission to link to, I *DO NOT*
plan to offer a link to spawn the external viewer on the page and I may
also run it through an HTML guard program to disable the right click
option too).

VIDEO PAGE IN QUESTION - http://www.freewebtown.com/kb0oxd/webcam2.html

One thing I did notice which may interfere with the player loading
(though it may work OK too) is the codebase and pluginspage
declarations have extra space between the slashes (inside the quote
marks). You probably want to remove that for completeness.

Do you think this is why all non-IE based browsers don't read the page
right and Firefox seems to think there's embedded music there (which BTW
I did not put there)?

Assuming the mms URL is active, it probably will work OK as-is.

Been working since last night. And I got the URL off the owner's page
and later emailed him about my plans to take the page live (As in
reciprocating links to and from the rest of the site). He told me no
problem so here I sit. :)

Hope this helps clear up what I have in mind and hope to accomplish :)

Cheers :)

Pat Cook
Denver, Colorado
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs
.

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