Read this webpage
Basically, if your media runs in QuickTime, it should run in SL. SL's client uses a QuickTime pluggin from your player to render/play media in SL. Providing you have the correct associations and codex in YOUR version of QuickTime.. all should be good.
Things to remember:
Just because you make your shiny new movie or music in a format that YOU can see both in YOUR player and ingame, won't mean everyone else will see it, unless they have also made the format asignments in THEIR player and have that codex installed.
Also consider that the media streams are ported into yours and everyone elses system, alongside the client bandwidth usage. It is NOT streamed within the client or from SL's servers (except local sound and gestures). Setting your bandwidth too high in the network tab in preferences, only effects the client not your system. SL's client does do localised throttleing of its bandwidth, but... this is slow to respond and WILL effect you watching/hearing media when the two streams (SL's client and the media) compete for your single bandwidth.
A good rule of thumb, is to test regularily your TRUE bandwidth (check here [url=http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=bandwidth+testing&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&vc=&fp_ip=UK]) and set your bandwidth in the Network Tab to 2/3rds of that reading if you want to watch the majority of movies, or higher if you listen to multi-cast music streams.
If you find the movies stall, and restart constantly, adjust the bandwidth ingame to a lower setting (in 50kbps increments), and in the QuickTime connections tab, to a higher cache setting (the movies will take longer to start, as it builds up a cache).
Although QuickTime will play Flash movies, any flash movie made after version 3, will have actionscripts removed (the version when actionscripts became available).
QuickTime will not play 'Poster', 'Kiosk' or html hosted movies/music in SL's client. These are rendered by the asigned browser, of which SL's client is not one.
If you are running Linux, you won't be able to watch any movie media in SL. The SL client doesn't support a Linux QT pluggin, mainly because Apple hasn't released one.
If you are a machinima maker in SL and want to stream them into SL's client, make your movies run at less than 100kbps to suit the average user. You can do this in several ways, dependant on how you want your movie presented. Adjusting the size/resolution of the movie (I found the largest resolution is 480x480, which equates to a screen size of 4.800x4.800 mtrs in SL). Use a lower colour resolution in the output at post production stage (24bit as opposed to 32bit). Smaller frame rates. Less Keyframes.
Over zealous use of codex settings, may produce a smaller encapsulated file, but the results would be 1) More interpolation/Pixelation. 2) Fuzzy looking movies. 3) More CPU/GPU time spend decoding the movie stream before rendering.
Using lower resolution but maintaining a high degree of sharpness, will mean you can always upscale the screen size to compensate, providing you match the increments i.e. 240x240 can be stretched upto 360x360 or 480x480 with little loss of quality.
Wherever possible, turn off Auto Scale in the media tab in Abount World, as this not only degrades the movie, but adds upto 50% additional overheads to the client during rendering. Align your texture on the screen manually using texture setting including offsets, once the movie is playing, click the align button to allow for finer adjustment.
When making a screen, always use a black colour for the whole prim, then select the veiwing face and change that to white, also check 'all bright' just to that face. This will do two things 1) Increase the contrast and brighness to the movie. 2) Reduce 'bleed' at the screen edges.
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