| MCPS has a server
for schools and offices to post and stream audio and
video clips for access from an MCPS Web site. The
advantage of streaming files is that files can be played
as they are downloaded. This is ideal for long audio
clips or any video clips.
MCPS servers support only streaming of RealMedia files
(.rm) at this time.
In order to stream a video file from our Multimedia
server (multimedia.montgomeryschoolsmd.org) the clip must
be encoded as a Real Media file with the suffix
of .rm. Video clips can be
encoded as RealMedia files (.rm) using a variety
of tools including, but not limited to Adobe
Premier, Avid Cinema, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Pinnacle Studio
and many conversion utilities. Some converstion
utilities are free and available from www.downloads.com.
Encoded files must end with the .rm suffix.
Filenames for multimedia should follow the
same rules as for other filenames: use all lower case letters,
no embedded spaces, and no special characters
other than “_” underscore.
Often, it is desirable to post two versions of each
file — one for broadband users who have the bandwidth
to receive a constant stream of rich media, and a second
option for dial-up users whose bandwidth is limited
and thus making it impossible to successfully view
the more dense broadband version of the media.
The process for uploading files to the server is the
same as for any file type, except that .rm files
should be put on the server for multimedia rather
than the web server. The files can be streamed ONLY
from the multimedia server where the streaming server
application is installed.
This
can be done using any FTP client like SmartFTP
or WS_FTP. To upload multimedia files use your same
FTP client, but change the host computer or address
to: multimedia.montgomeryschoolsmd.org The
remaining FTP sign-on information is the same as
for uploading files to the primary web server at
www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org. If you're using WS_FTP,
you'll be making a new profile for this. With SmartFTP,
you're using a new address.
Your basic webmaster account gives
you rights to both the web server and the multimedia
server, however, in some cases a new directory will
have to first be created by the server
administrator (see below).
The directory structure of the multimedia server is
the same as for www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org Use /schools, /departments,
or /curriculum directory to match your web directory.
For example: The Beall Elementary school webmaster
might FTP the file our_class_play.rm to multimedia.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/bealles/our_class_play.rm
If I have broadband and dial-up versions, I might
name the files: our_class_play_bb.rm and our_class_play_modem.rm
NOTE: Since multimedia files by nature are very large,
it is important to delete old files when they are no
longer of interest to your viewing community.
IMPORTANT: NO RAW VIDEO SHOULD BE
STORED ON THE MULTIMEDIA SERVER. There is not sufficient
space to accommodate files that are not encoded
on our server. Please post only those files in production
as streaming files.
Create links to your streaming content much like you
would link to a document. But, since we need to tell
the browser to launch the RealPlayer plugin and play
your clip, the format of your link is a little different.
It will look like: http://multimedia.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/ramgen/departments/itv/newsupdate/
newsupdatecurrent_broadband.rm See
how this link includes “/ramgen/” This
is the critical piece which launches the plug-in for
RealMedia. Without it, instead of streaming, the entire
file will be downloaded before it is played for the
viewer.
As a courtesy, always give your site visitor
advance notice that this link is different from the
normal HTML link.
- Tell them in advance that they are using a streaming media format
- Tell them about how long the file is in time units.
- Give them an option to get the broadband or dial-up version depending
on how they connect to the Internet.
- Have a link to download the current plug-in for RealPlayer
somewhere on your page or in the page footer.
Sample link:
Watch: Broadband | Dial-Up (Real
Media 5 min)
If you
have other questions or need to have a new directory created
for your site please contact webmaster@mcpsmd.org. |
