From: Jennifer Yuan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Streaming problem w/embedded player on Macs
Hi, folks. We're having a bit of a video mystery here which we're hoping
someone might be able to give us some tips on. (Even if you don't have any
solutions, we'd also appreciate feedback on the ease-of-use of our demo
URLs below.)
The Setup:
We're working on setting up a page that delivers RealVideo with
synchronized PowerPoint slide content, targeted to a 800 x 600 display
screen. We're using a frameset with two frames. In one (seen on the right
in the demo pages), we have an embedded a RealMedia video screen, control
panel, and position bar. In the other (seen on the left in the demo
pages), we have converted the PowerPoint slides into GIFs and loaded them
up on individual html pages. After using RealProducer Plus for Windows to
compile time signatures into the video stream, we now have a video stream
that "hurls" slides by calling up the URLs of our converted PowerPoint
slides in the frame on the left.
The Problem(s):
(a) We've found that the streaming content seems to work without a problem
on several versions of IE and Netscape run on the various flavors of
Windows. On the Mac side, however, we're finding that there's a similar
problem in both IE and Netscape -- we're noticing a certain stop-motion
"jerkiness" in the video delivery, with the video display sometimes being
slowed to a series of still image captures while the audio still runs,
apparently unaffected, in the background.
Interestingly, if you call up the pop-up volume control slider from the
control panel and leave the slider open, the video begins running smoothly
again for as long as the slider is visible (see Demo 2 below).
Also, we found that when we first created 320x240 RealMedia files (straight
from VHS tapes to .rm files using RealProducer Plus on Windows), we didn't
seem to have this "jerkiness" in the videos (see Demo 1 below). We've
since tried to replicate the original .rm file creation process, but found
all subsequent single- and multi-stream files created at the custom size of
176x132 to be marred by the "jerkiness" problem.
(b) We're finding that viewing the presentation in a browser is highly
memory-intensive. If anyone has any tips on how to deliver the same
content without needing to allocate something on the order of 30MB-40MB of
RAM (!) to a browser application, the tips would be greatly appreciated.
Of course, we do want to keep the video display embedded in the browser
window -- the intent of this setup is to avoid the "multiple window"
phenomenon of running both a RealMedia player for the video and then also a
web browser to display the slides. (BTW, RealPresenter is not an option
for us based on our needs.)
The Caveats:
Please be sure you have the latest RealMedia plug-in installed on your
browser before attempting to access the demo pages. Otherwise you will
encounter something other than an embedded video display. On the Mac side,
you should also be prepared to allocate more memory to your browser if
you're having trouble viewing the video. (Please write us -- we would be
very interested in your feedback about just how much memory you needed to
allocate, and on what type of system, if you find this is a necessary
adjustment.)
The Demos:
Demo Page 1
http://www.med.upenn.edu/comply/frameset1.html
6-stream (SureStream) video encoded at 320x240 pixels
"non-jerky" video
Demo Page 2
http://www.med.upenn.edu/comply/frameset2.html
3-stream (SureStream) video encoded at 176x132 pixels
"jerky" video
Thanks in advance to everyone for your responses!
--Jennifer Yuan
Univ. of PA School of Medicine
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