May 18, 2004 03:05 am well... i use windows media player for everything. sure, make fun of me... but i keep my pc light of unnecessary installs. keeps things simple for me that way.
what would you prefer...
Posted on May 18, 2004 01:07 am
coolo
Frisco's Most Underrated
Member Since: Jan 28, 2003
if you were browsing a website, and there was a song you wanted to stream to your computer. Would you prefer if the website made you use winamp, or made you use real player. Or would you prefer if it automatically used your default player (I ask, though I don't think I have the capabilities to make this happen. I'm not dB ya know!).
Anyways, I'm leaning towards winamp. Any thoughts?
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May 18, 2004 03:05 am well... i use windows media player for everything. sure, make fun of me... but i keep my pc light of unnecessary installs. keeps things simple for me that way.
May 18, 2004 04:19 am You can't force anyone to use anything. If you stream an mp3 via an m3u reference file, the visitors PC will open whatever application is associated with mp3 files. The only way you could "force" someone to use RealPlayer is by streaming a .rm file (which sucks) but that is only because I believe that RP is the only app that will play RP, but if the RealMedia were associated with another app, it would open that app.
Does that make sense?
That said, RealPlayer blows chunks.
May 18, 2004 06:25 am jet audio also plays real audio files, my brother also once had some sort of dodgy plug-in for media player that played real audio as well
May 18, 2004 06:30 am I was unaware that Jet did, interesting. I was aware there are a couple of rouge plugins or little known players that play RealMedia, but are not common enough to really concern yourself with.
Thanks for the info, I was unaware Jet did that.
May 18, 2004 07:38 am I'm with el musico for whats its worth...i know where i am with media player. I hate real audio with a passion :)
May 18, 2004 08:34 am i like media player too myself...good all round app (for a microsoft player). pity cubase or fruity or someone doesnt make a cool app for music making type people, one with vst capabilities and stuff...
May 18, 2004 12:21 pm winamp is the bomb, you can write plugins and get internet radio and tv stations and set up your own internet radio stations via shoutcast
May 18, 2004 01:28 pm Well, it looks like the options we were toying with, is using either streaming the .rm file like dB was saying, or linking to a winamp playlist. Apparently, if you click the winamp playlist, and the playlist references a song stored on your server, it will stream that song from the server. I've never done this before, but that's what we were thinking of doing (forcing winamp).
May 18, 2004 01:32 pm what do you mean "winamp" playlist. Winamp uses standard playlists (such as m3u lists) that work on many mp3 players.
May 18, 2004 08:03 pm Hmm, I guess you are right dB. I don't know how it's going to be done, but the guy said he would do it tomorrow. I'll let you know more then.
May 18, 2004 08:06 pm What I do here is dynamically generate an m3u playlist on the fly built by content extracted from the database, and that m3u file opens whatever app the visitors machine has associated with m3u. I have tested it with a few different players and it has worked really well thus far, at least I haven't heard any complaints :-)
May 18, 2004 08:35 pm If any of you are on my alpha team, you'd know what I'm trying to do ;) Up to 3,500 lines of server side code, about 2,000 of client side.
The idea simply is that it will automatically detect major players, and will play the track in the 'best' for the format used (a little more than half dozen formats now supported). If it cannot detect automatically, it'll ask the user and give suggestions based on their system.
This came about after thousands of complaints from 'lamers' that didn't even know a sideways (to the right) triangle was a play symbol, let alone what player they had installed on their machine that could play actual streams (as apposed to DLAPB that the majority of sites use), etc. etc..
P.S., dB, WinAmp playlists = .pls and .m3u
Another note: Quote:
, it will stream that song from the server.
Actually no, it will download the track from the server, and if the player supports it, the player will start playing the track when it receives enough of the file (Download And Play Back). This is risky, because if you don't want someone to download, they already have!
Streaming however, loads only portions of the track into memory, generally in a protected format, decodes, and plays back, nothing usually hits the hard-drive with the majority of players available (unless someone uses specialized applications that do).
W.
May 18, 2004 11:57 pm ok, thanks for the info waldo. If that's the case, are there other formats that stream beside Real Player? What would be the file extensions if we wanted to allow people to use winamp or WMP instead. Basically, we don't want it to be a DLAPB type of scenario.
May 19, 2004 12:28 am You need to have a streaming server first, the type of streaming server will determine what players can be supported.
The file extensions again, depend entirely on the server, but it's not the extensions that really determine anything, rather the entire URI.
For WinAmp streaming, although not entirely protected (does offer some), you'd use ShoutCast. It has limitted on demand support.
Some other streaming servers include realserver, darwin, windows media services, icecast, etc. etc.
The other alternative is to signup for services that offer this, through direct linking programs, etc., as licensing for a bunch of servers/players, and the bandwidth, can get astronomical in price for small projects.
W.
May 19, 2004 04:24 am Yes, the reason I chose to take the simple yet functional route I took with the m3u/mp3 lists is the fact that it does not require a media server, as RealServer and some other media serving software, as Waldo siad, does get hugely expensive...considering the reasons for HRC Pro and the prices I wanted to charge for the amount of people and listening I expected, I didn't see how it was feasable.
If you are looking at getting in to something that serious, Waldo would be better suited to help considering the scope of what he handles with NWR...
May 19, 2004 07:15 am I bloody hate streaming media...
gimme downloadable mp3s any day.
May 19, 2004 07:21 am I bloody hate mp3's...frickin' sucky sound...so is streaming media for that matter...give me a CD or DVD audio...
May 19, 2004 07:26 am i prefer when the band plays at my house...
its funny how recording techniques and sound are the best theyve ever been, yet the public in general is all for compressing stuff down for portable players, and what have you.
the song, not the quality, is king still it seems...
May 19, 2004 01:55 pm Ah, just wait here, Lossless compression is becoming much more useable ;) In fact, NWR4 even supports it...
BTW, there is no difference in quality between a file that's streamed, and DLAPB'd. Still the same data, just the way it's sent that's different. And no, the way it's sent can't effect the audio quality either...
W.
May 19, 2004 09:26 pm So we went ahead and updated the website, www.paraphan.com, and just did the m3u playlist thing (even if it is DLAPB). We just figured the majority of people would not be aware of where to look for the downloaded file (heck, I don't even know - is it the temp folder?)
Now I just gotta figure out how to transfer my domain registration from one hosting service to another.
May 20, 2004 01:25 am Well, they're increasing in volume, as all you need to do is right click on the m3u, save as, then open it in a text editor, copy out the text, and paste it in explorer, then download the mp3. And there's even software that does all that for you whenever you click on an m3u (not to mention players that cache/store the song automatically for you)... I see about 2,000 attempts daily from that type of software on NWR...
I'd say, if I had to, that about 30% of the 'internet' music loving population knows how to grab DLAPB files by now, and it's growing daily.
As far as domain transfer, it isn't difficult at all. All you have to do is change the domain record to point to the new domain name servers, and the rest should go from there (providing your new host is on top of things), within 72 hours worldwide.
W.
May 20, 2004 04:33 am Yeah, it is easy to jack stuff. How do you stop it Waldo? ALl I do right now is .htaccess directives which works for some...
May 20, 2004 12:35 pm From reading Waldo's posts, I gathered that it means DownLoad And Play Back.
May 20, 2004 01:00 pm dB: Quote:
Up to 3,500 lines of server side code, about 2,000 of client side.
Plus a streaming server I wrote, and the use of a couple others for compatibility...
W.
May 20, 2004 01:03 pm Lol, it's a LOT of work keeping up with this stuff!
W.
May 20, 2004 01:05 pm Thats the one thing that I am currently not happy with here is the streaming. I mean it works, the files play and all that just fine, no bandwidth problems, but I would like to be able to have hi and lo band options better hotlinking protection and such...just haven't found any free, or even cheap options to go about it...if you know anywhere to start looking, pass 'em on!
May 20, 2004 01:09 pm You certainly aren't going to find and 'free' options, or really even cheap. The development of NWR4 has taken me years, and I don't even want to tell you how much money.
Maybe when MyNoWhere is released, you can use the services available there, I plan to price the setup quite reasonably (bandwidth plus a little to cover the cost of dev/support/etc.)
Basically, it's the whole 'integration' thing I told you about.
W.
May 20, 2004 01:36 pm Yeah, I have scoured the net a lot looking for different code snippets and server-side apps and have found really nothing that does any good for decent money...oh well, what I have is working quite well, so I am not loosing sleep or anything :-)
May 27, 2004 02:53 pm Well, it strikes me as astounding that more than 10% of the internet using population would know to open an m3u file in a text editor to figure out where they can download the mp3.
Anyhow, that's not the point. My new quandry is this: Before changing servers, we had the m3u playlist thing working perfectly. We changed hosting providers late last week, and now when we put the site back up, and when we click the m3u link the player will open but there will be a message saying 404 bad request. Does anyone have any idea what the issue might be?
thanks
May 27, 2004 05:40 pm There's a ton of applications out there (won't list them because I don't want to propagate them any further) that automatically look at m3u's for you, and download the files, and those that grab them from your cache, etc... Sad, but trye.
If there's a 404 error, the m3u link is either bad, the provider has bad mime types, or the hosting provider has blocked the mp3 file type (many due) to limit bandwidth use.
W.
May 27, 2004 06:49 pm If mp3 is not a registered mime type (which I am sure it is where you are at) you can easily register it with an htaccess directive.
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