QuickTime Streaming Protocols

Hi,
I use serval types of streaming servers. The latest one I have uses the QuickTime Darwin streaming protocols only, which requires that you 'Hint' the movie, under streaming section of the movie maker I use. This I can do np. Problem is, SL screws with the stream and can pixelate the movie.

One of the main reasons I want to use this server, is its hosting space of 500tb, and 4tb of bandwidth per month. Yes, TB's... thats right .

I could just host the movies without 'Hinting' them on the standard webspace, but the quality and start speed is far superior on the QuickTime streamer.
Anyone have any ideas how I can prevent the movie from degrading in SL? I suspect SL can't handle the Darwin Protocols yet, but they should upgrade as it will improve the lag and packet loss.

Is there an good alternative to QuickTime (flash would be perfect lol) like realplayers rm format, avi is out of the question (too big a file format for no quality/speed gain), even windows media files (wmv) are huge?

I'm off to fondle my terabytes

Me again,

The QuickTime movies I stream into SL, or targetted at only 115kbps and play perfectly out of SL, the stream report shows never over the 115kbps rate. This should fit perfectly within the realms of anyone able to load and play SL. We do not use the 500kbps that most movies use. The results are picture perfect though.

As most will know, movies made in SL, will have variable frame rates, we use 15fps rendering, however our resolutions and movie aspect ratios are much different to say PAL or NTSC, so we make our own screens, so are not constrained.

Hi,

I recently rented another hosting service with those quicktime streaming server features
So basically i just add a quicktime streaming server to my hosting account, that's the easy part,
That hinting crap had me tormented, i allready have all my movie files in small mp4 format
And i don't have the qt pro, even if i did i find qt pro very slow to load and convert my small movie files.
I was wondering maybe there's a way to stream mp4's using the same qt streaming server
Anyway if you read this shout me up in-world would be cool to talk about some.
I haven't used the quicktime streaming server features on my host yet, dunno how.

Later

Hi,

As we run a business that requires absolute quality and uptime, we have now purchased dedicated servers (3 in total). We also use 4 seperate programmes to 'finish' the movies so that they stream flawlessly. To be honest, if you want to stream qt movies into sl, you need to spend real bucks (as we found out) the cheaper solutions aren't cut out to run alongside SL.

You can find out about how to 'hint' a qt movie on the apple website, setting up the H.264 protocols is a nightmare, we had over 20 templates created at one time, only to find out that the only real way, was to make a 'self contained' file, that could cope with a range of bandwidths, this makes your mov file grow some 300% in size.

If you have a couple of hundred bucks to spend each month on a dedicated server(s) (we use 3 mirrored servers) and can regain that revenue, you may find you are maybe limited to either suffering the quality of the 'cheaper' server options, or maybe partitioning off a section of your own PC to run as a server and stream them yourself... or if you have a good bandwidth which is uncapped, try buying a 'stand alone server pc box' and running your own with that?

The mp4 native format.... well that can stall sl, as it can cause the server to burst speed the file header to your pc, its a fine mixture of a mp4 format, mixed with H.264 codex settings that work best(ish). Get the mixture wrong, and you end up with pixelated and fuzzy, stuttering movies.

Best of luck...