How to view/stream video in SL

Ok, I am new to SL life and am trying to find my circle of friends and ‘decorate’ my place (when I get one) with my own style. My style is old films. Ideally what I would like to do is get a big screen and stream/play? movies to my bigscreen. I am a reasonably technical person but am lost on how this is done.

I know this has been asked on the forum before but the answers I see are only partial. I looked through the FAQs also.

Can someone point me to a complete post of give me step by step instructions on how to do this. Most of my films are on very old VHS and I can drop those into a digitial format. Once I have them digital where do I go from there? FTP server, etc?

Thanks !

Kris

Moved to Movies & Machinima.

I don't have a complete guide to this, Krispii, but did you also see the F1 Help page guide?

http://secondlife.com/app/help/guides/streamingmedia.html

You can get this inworld by pressing F1. To play a movie, it's pretty much a matter of making sure it plays in QuickTime Player first, and then using the same URL in ABOUT LAND > MEDIA tab.

"The url has to be Quicktime compatible..."
Oh well that's a big help wise-guys! What can make .mov files other than Quicktime? How come some Flash (swf) files play but others don't? How do I know how many simultaneous connections the server I'm hosting the file on can handle?

- Jolan

Quicktime is not really a video format of it's own, like the Divx or RealMedia formats. It will play all sorts of videos like MPEG-4, Cinepak, Sorenson, and H.264. Here is a list of the compatible audio and video codecs for Quicktime 7.

Any software that can save your movie in one of those formats can be used to create videos that will work in the Quicktime player. I have had good luck with the Sorenson codec becasue it is compatable with older version of Quicktime. H.264 or MPG4 would be a better choice if you think most of your viewers will have Quicktime 7 installed.

I use Sony's Video Vegas software to edit and convert my videos - but that might be overkill (i.e. expensive) if all you want to do is convert a few movies for SL. There are some free tools that will get the job done - including iMovie on the Mac and even Windows Movie Maker (ick). Here are a few more options that I've culled from the Forums...

phoenix Behemoth recommends SUPER ©

Tao Takashi recommends Blip.tv

Lightwave Valkyrie recommends PSPvideo 9 . I've used this program before and it works well.

And of course Quicktime Pro will do the trick.

Here are a few other Forum Posts about this subject: Bringing Home Movies to SL , Format movie to be viewable in SL , Converting video files , How to make .avi or .mpg into .mov


My guess would be that SL doesn't fully support Flash files, hehe. I'm thinking that the interactive aspects of the Flash files are what cause problems. I have managed to get a few .swf files to play but it is a hit-and-miss proposition. Here is a post by FlipperPA about creating Flash files in SL


I have had good luck using my normal Web Hosting account to stream the files to SL. I just get them into the proper format and upload them to my hosting server. I've had a dozen people watching the movie at once with very few problems. It is possible to set up the Quicktime Streaming Server but I have not tried it. The Blip.tv site also seems like a good choice cuz they will host your file for free.


That should get you started in the right direction. Showing movies in SL is not really that complicated - it's the converting and hosting of the video file that seems to confuse most people. Good Luck!

Thanks Vlad.

This is great information. I do understand how to convert, make, rip, whatever video from any format to any format, so I have that covered. I too use Vegas Video and I like it, its an old version though a friend gave me.

My question is if I can stream it from my website or do I have to setup a local server. I can setup a local server but am sure my upload bandwidth will limit me.

I will read the links to the other forum posts you mentioned.

Thanks to the other posters too.

Kris

Duh ! You answered my question in your post above. So I can just load it to my webserver and stream it. I want to do full length movies but likely only two of us will watch them at the same time so I should be fine. I can probably crunch my movies down to 200 megs if I keep it around 180 kbps, so I could have five movies up there without much problem.

Ok, slightly off subject. So can I buy a SL TV and have it with buttons on it so I can have like 6 movies on there and it will only require the click of a button to cycle to a new movie?

And I read that with the lastest build that Fast foward and reverse are now supported?

Thanks again

Kris

Glad to help, Krispii.

I don't really have any experience with commercial TV products in SL. I've mostly just experimented on my own. I do remember reading an ad somewhere that claimed to support fastforward, reverse, and a few other nifty features but I can't remember who/where/what. although now I wish I could 'cuz I had been meaning ot check it out.As far as I know a fastforward and/or reverse feature would require some scripting wizardy as LSL doesn't support these features directly.

I have experimented a bit with longer/large movies and I've found that basically - shorter is better. Very long movies may just sort of stop in the middle and start over from the beginning with no warning. This is sort of how Quicktime acts on the web when the current play position catches up to the amount that has been downloaded.

Depending on your connection and the movie you may have no problems, tho. A little experimenting with file sizes and movie length will certainly help.

Fast forward/reverse is only possible with either 'fully download and watch' or 'RSTP' streaming movies, progressive download will work providing the whole movie has downloaded.

If you target movies to 'stream' at 100kbps data rate or less, most client run systems will cope with that, without causing restarting.

How many viewers can watch your stream at a time? Thats simple maths.. data bit rate (say 100kbps) times the amount of viewers (say 10) = 10x100kb would be the bandwidth required from the host server, plus a 20% overhead to make sure the cache is always kept filled in advance. Our 4 servers, deliver 7.4tb's of bandwidth with a 1gb burst rate. We do however run our SL business by streaming content.
Targetting the correct port into the PC system is equally important, a lot of our movie preparations go into port targetting. Those untargetted will scan for 'other' ports and this can cause overload on the PC system and client viewer.

Port scanning in quicktime?

rtsp:// without a port defined as part of the url will be intepreted as port 554, rtsp with a port defined will use only that port. http without a port defined will use port 80, http with a port defined will use only that port.
That's kind of the reason why standard ports are defined in the first place.

With 65536 ports available, only network security tools and script kiddy stuff does a full port scan. Nobody in their right mind would build in a port scanner rather than simply returning a "not found" error.

BTW, this is all testable. Simply set your streaming server to 554 and give quicktime an rtsp address without a port number. Video plays. Change the server to port 555 and try the same address, video does not play, hence no scanning.

Some streaming services will scan for further ports if the one targetted is blocked for some reason. As we do not use RTSP we make sure all our delivery mechanisms use the correct ports and do not scan. UDP and TCP are the correct ports for media.

UDP and TCP aren't ports, they are transport protocols.
TCP = transmission control protocol.
UDP = user datagram protocol.

Both can operate over any port.

I bow to your indepth knowledge and time spent pointing this out, but my point still remains relevant, unless the movies are targetted, some server OS's will scan and use incorrect protocols which can interfere with the client.

It might be a miscommunication, but I've never seen this happening.
If the server is scanning the client, it would be a function of the media server and not the OS. It's possible that a media server was coded to do that, but wouldn't serve any useful function.

Client opens a port on their side, connects to a specified port on the server (either specifically specified in the URL or known from standard port numbers).
Server checks for listening programs on that port and forwards the connection to the program or drops the connection if no program is listening.
Program takes over and responds to the client on the port they opened originally.

Trying to use any other port than that the client opened would result in nothing working. When the client opens that port, the program that opened it (in this case quicktime) binds itself to that port. If the data it is expecting arrives on a port that it isn't listening to, it cannot see that data at all as the OS will not forward it.

In some protocols, there are methods for specifying a different port to reply to, but the program must still be bound and listening to those ports.

If the server is simply using an incorrect media protocol, then it's a misconfiguration or bad coding in the media server software or the client software. The OS doesn't select the protocols to use. The software specifically opens ports with things like transport protocol, local port number etc specified. The media protocols are then layered over the top of the transport protocols and are specifically handled by the software.

There is an issue on some webservers where media files served from them are incorrectly identified causing the client to not know which program to use for playback, or pick the wrong one, but this is a failure to include enough data in the mime type file on the server and doesn't relate to ports. Everything is still served through port 80 (or whatever the webserver is bound to).

Perhaps you could give an example of what you mean by port targeting? The only things I can find with google are related to exploits.

We did many months of research before deciding to make a commercial venture into SL for machinima advertising. This included the markets in SL, hardware requirements, software and servers.
We approached many companies providing bespoke server solutions and made in depth enquiries regarding streaming content. Surprisingly out of the 10+ companies, around 4 of them stated 'don't worry about ports and protocols, our servers take care of all that stuff, if there isn't a protocol available on the veiwers PC, our systems will 'scan' for 'other protocols' to use, whatever happens, your movie will get through'. Something that we found quite disturbing and picked this up with the remaining suppliers. They stated that they would only use the protocols that we set.

Firstly our concerns were, that we didn't want any system that could be deemed as a exploit scanning system. Secondly, we would only want to stream content through the accepted protocols. I believe we made the right choice.

Through various techniques, we prepare our movies to a high specification, giving the best quality, with the least overhead to the client and supporting system. We have 4 seperate servers, 2 in the USA, 1 in the UK and 1 in France, all supporting mirrored systems, to support our activities and offering 7.4tb bandwidth.

I think they were probably feeding you a line.

Some places will host various formats like quicktime and wmv, then try to detect plugins on a web page, but that's not really anything to worry about in SL where they can't use javascript.
There's no way for them to scan ports on a client to detect which media programs are on there.

It was bizarre enough for us to reconsider our options, and to make sure there was no way, we as a company, could be seen to be causing undue overheads to the client software. We were just being cautious and wanted to make people aware.
Whether they were 'spinning a yarn/line' or not is imaterial, they didn't get our business.

Sys Slade, you seem to have a lot of knowledge about media and streaming I have a problem and I just can't figure it out. I almost have got to the point to say SL has a problem in my area.

I'm trying to run a Theater on my land. I follow all the instructions about open up the land, choosing a texture and placing a URL in the provided slot.

I have the screen set up with the same texture. When I click to play Media.. It either goes black screen or nothing.

But on the other hand I have some animated .gif and pictures on Photobucket that when I do the above, I have no problems.

I want to be able to show real movies and TV on the Screen.

If you or somebody else could help me, I would appreciate it.

Justin

Justin, look at this thread for the basics /110/e8/177716/1.htmlMore advanced controls, you need a 'media player'.. most are called all sorts of things, but they are all basically url controllers. If you want something more snazzy, we do a Proximity server, video walls etc...

Have you tried running the URL in quicktime player (outside of SL)?
Black screens are sometimes a sign of missing video codecs, but not always. If the video plays in quicktime it will usually play in SL. The fact that the gifs are loading in the quicktime process suggests it not a missing quicktime causing it.

I think someone you know may have been in touch. They also mentioned a theater and wanted some help. If it's an alt or a friend, we were supposed to link up yesterday but the grid was down. I'll be online around 7:30am game time if you want me to drop by and take a look.

It should be very easy to get a stream going on a prim with said texture. The problems arise when your converting and finding the right files. Sometimes certain media catches a black screen with me as well, and sometimes it even crashes the entire browser if the media file is not compatible. This is why I never understood why why SL went with Quicktime out of all formats, it is the least common for video streams anyway. I found like 2 or 3 Quicktime television streams , 1 was Nasa TV and the other two just showed up in SL with no video just audio. To be safe anyway, MPEG files are usually always fine.

Again, thanks for all your answers. In my last reply, I noted that I resolved the issue.

Many thanks
Justin

Howdy everyone. HOpe all is well on the SL frontier. This looks like the most knowledgable thread around, so hopefully someone will catch this post.

I've been streaming videos for a bit now, and originally it went without a hitch but the quality had been craptacular. What I have been doing is converting divx to quicktime .mov files, so you can imagine what i'd been going through. Upon fiddling around to up the framerates and quality, I created an even worse problem. For me and at least 2 other people halfway through any video, it starts skipping and causing lag until the video is stopped. One person has had no problems at all, which is perplexing to say the least. After reading through this thread, and taking note that "if quicktime can play it, you should be able to play it in SL" I decided to skip conversion from divx/xvid avi to QT .mov and try streaming the original divx. Black screen. I use QT Pro for my conversion on an MBP and viewing the files locally causes no issues.

Could someone give me some ideas as to proper settings for conversion and/or a way to keep the quality up on the .mov or advice for getting divx/xvid to play properly? I have a huge host for these files, so downstream bandwidth from the server is not an issue.

Thanks, Rick

Hi Kris. I have a question for you that you may know already. How do I slow down the speed of the video in Vegas Video? I use it aswell and make alot of SL videos. Please, can you help me??

To 'slow down' movie sections in Sony Vegas, you 'grab' the end of the clip in the timeline, hold down Ctrl key and drag/stretch the movie stip. However sometimes there is insufficient raw data there to actually fill in the gaps. Where you hit a threshold, the programme will 'tween' frames into the gaps upto a point. This can result in ghosting and 'additional limbs' appearing LOL.

We use slowed SL animations/walks etc for our models/actors to gain better flowing speed, rather than have them look like a 'Charlie Chaplin' look alike.