Streaming my own Movies

I'm sure this question has been asked a dozen times, but I just recently got a dvr, and all I have to do is input the Url.

1. Where can I find more url movies on SL?
2. How can I stream, say a tv show and watch it in SL?

1.no idea
2.i think it's illegal

I've already seen some shops in sl, and I can name a ton of stuff in sl that is illegal.

do you think it makes it right then?

Yes it does.

Actually there is a way it's Legal...

In the UK we have a TV Licence, that Licence allows us to watch TV at the property the Licence is associated with AND watch it away from home on a Battery operated device.

You can also get a box which streams TV over the net ( although I'm not sure it streams QT ) using a box plugged into your arial. Therefore in THEORY you can stream TV into your SL home.. The Clincher is everyone watching that stream must have a valid, UK, TV Licence for their RL home (or the property they are watching it from if using a Mains Powered Device.).

But LL's jurisdiction is in the US, and therefore must comply with US laws.
QT streaming is more trouble than it's worth, IMHO, and stealable to the max.

I checked into this about a month ago. To do it legally, you need an internet audio-video (for music videos) blanket license or you need to go to each video's copyright holder. For movies and tv shows, I'm not sure if they have blanket licenses or not. I'm assuming the way to legally do this is to contact the film's copyright holder directly and request a license since I haven't come across anywhere to get a blanket license for TV shows and movies..I'm not sure they even offer it.

The way you would stream content into SL if you had the content legally or illegally are the same. Make sure your video is in quicktime format (if it is not you can download programs to make it into quicktime format), upload it to your server, copy the URL, and paste it into your SL video field. It's that simple. As far as finding content without a license, there are tons of ways to do this, which I think all of us know, so there really is no need to get into that.

People are selling all kinda of illegal things in SL. Videos aren't any different, I just wanna watch them and not spend 3k like some are selling them for, thats just outrageous. Thanks for the information, I had a feeling id need to upload it and all that jazz.

Through ASCAP an internet audio video blanket license costs 400 roughly per year for commercial rights, however, when I contacted them to make the buy, they told me Sony BMG had already expressed intrest in a license for SL. That was the only reply I got, so I'm assuming they won't license it. But this is besides the point. What upsets me is that people trying to legally do this can't for various reasons. It took me forever to find the licensing company, then waited 2 weeks for that reply..lol. Just goes to show you why some take the illegal road instead of the legal. (ASCAP also offers a blanket license cheaper for non profit uses, but I didn't inquire about that one)

Yet to me, the thought of the huge fines and prison time (or so I've been told you can be sent to prison for it...) are just not worth the BS of spending my time downloading them, making them to quicktime movies, uploading them to my server, spending money on that server, and dealing with all the hassle of customer service over it. If I have to go through all of that, I want to make sure it's going to be legal so that I'm not wasting my time and risking wasting years more in jail time.

Seeing as I'm being lectured on illegalness here. Let me ask you a few questions.

1. Ever buy a shirt that had a real logo on it? Like.. nike? Disney?
2. Ever go to the playboy bunny club in SL?
3. Ever go to the Barbie club in SL?
4. Ever buy an avatar to make you look like a disney char or looney toon char?
5. Or even outside of SL, ever dl a torrent of something?

I'm pretty sure there are a few more I haven't mentioned here.

If you do any of these, you have no right to lecture me on illegalness.

I too would like to stream in some movies, not to charge or make any money, so according to what the DVD's say, thats not illegal, so the questions i have are

1) how much bandwith is required to bring in a movie that say more than 5 or 6 ppl will be watching?
2) if i rent server space how much storage do i need for say 2-3 movies at one time?
3) Someone mentioned how to d/l movie into a quicktime format, any tutorial info that you can give me would be appreciated.

I have never even d/led a movie before, so if i sound stoopid its only cause i am..lol so be kind...

If the broadcast is UK TV then US have NO juristiction over it.. there is also probably ( I'm certain in fact ) a clause in the T&C that makes streaming nothing to do with LL. As in fact that is the case and as such US law doesn't matter one bit. It's like saying I couldn't watch UK TV using the afformentioned device and my Mobile Phone whilst holidaying in the US.. in fact I can completely legally.

Katier, if that is true then a) I love you and b) FINALLY a reason to pay the extortion that is the UK TV Licence fee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*edit* I should make it clear that I already do Open to miscontrual otherwise!

Yep as long as 1) you hold a valid TV licence at your place of residence. and 2) the device you are watching on is BATTERY powered. then you can watch it anywhere.

The questsions haven't really been answered on HOW. Just talk about how illegal it is and to get a liscense.

Basically the way to stream is to have the movie posted to a URL, have a server ready to serve that movie over quicktime on that url, and then to feed that url to the SL media property for the parcel(s) you wish to stream to.

As for legality, unless you actually *PRODUCED* the movie yourself, it is publically available legally (such as flash animations) or it is known to be in the public domain, chances are it is illegal to stream it.

if you want a resource as to where to find some movies that you could stream, try www.archive.org or www.publicdomaintorrents.com

archive.org specifically *MAY* actually have the url/server already ready, i.e. they do host some live movies which you can jus feed the address to and SL will play them.

It won't exactly be the latest and greatest hollywood blockbusters, but there is some very good and entertaining things there (especially if you've ever had a film studies class, they eat all that kinda stuff up)

1. No. I make my clothing. When I don't, I buy from designers that don't feel the need to steal.
2. SL clubs are not my thing, so no.
3. Again, no.
4. Uh, making myself look like a disney character or looney toon is not my thing either. I only buy skin from Lost, or I make my own...so, No.
5. I don't download torrents.

So, I suppose I do have the right? But actually, I wasn't lecturing you. I was discussing why I don't do it...you must feel really guilty about something

As for the comment about no one answering HOW, I did tell you how.

I explained in my post how.

1. I'm not sure, but it's so cheap now that I personally have so much I can't use it all! The site I use is http://www.godaddy.com. They have really good deals. They upgraded our account recently free and gave us so much more bandwidth than we already had. There are also little things you can do to control this, like changing the size of your videos.
2. That will honestly depend on a couple of things, including your video's sizes. The program I use for converting lets you choose many different things about your video quality and size, and this will make a difference. Choose wisely ;p . I get a video file that is the length of a music video down to between 5-10 MB and they still stream great, if needed.
3. I bought a program called WinAVI mp4 converter. Works like a charm and is pretty self explainatory. A free one is called Videora, but the useability sucks (at least for me). It's confusing, and some people can't get it to convert WMAs, though it is supposed to. I couldn't get it to do that, so I bought WinAVI. I don't know of any tutorials, but most programs have help pages or forums where you can ask questions.

I have a site I can upload the stream to, I just need to figure out HOW to make that stream, I heard winamp can do this?

Ohhhh and I'm guilty on a ton of things

You don't need WinAMP for videos I don't think. I honestly think if you have a site, that's all you need. If you use WinAMP, I think it's all live from your computer's playlist on winamp.

When you upload a video to your server, all you need is the link to stream it into SL. Does this make sense? I don't believe that you need any other external program to stream into SL> to do a playlist, might be different, but I believe that that can be scripted to work out as a playlist.

I'll put it this way, the one time I tried to use winamp to stream anything, I was unable to use SL. I suppose this could just be my crappy computer, but still lol. I don't think you have to even go through all the trouble, all you need are your URLs.

So, say I wanted to stream some new music videos or movies I just got. I would upload them onto my computer (if they were not already on it), then I would check their file types. To the best of MY knowledge, the only movie file types you can get to work in SL are .MOV or .MP4. If your content is not in one of those extentions, it is time to find a program to make them into those types. So lets say my files were all .WMAs. I run those through a converter, come out with my .MP4s. I'd then check the playback quality to make sure they weren't crap. Assuming all this happens, it is time to upload the videos onto your server. I personally use SmartFTP Client, but there are tons you can use to make this process easier. Once they are all uploaded, you take their location link and paste it into the media tab in SL. These links are generally something like http://www.yoursitename.com/yourvideoname.mp4. If you use a "DVD player" in SL, you just put your links into it however you've set it up to work (notecards, chat, yadda yadda).

I hope this info is helpful to you guys in some way. This is the only way I ever do it, and it works fine for me. I use a DVD player we made in SL to manage all of my links, but you can always manually change the stream URLs.

Streaming media is HUGELY taxing on bandwidth.
Of course, this varies with the quality (read: size) of the movie.
So to answer your questions:
1) Depends
2) Depends
3) Quicktime plays alot of formats.

Ok, I'm using the VLC media player to stream then using this website to upload. http://www.archive.org/details/movies The problem is, it has to be in quicktime for Second Life to be able to play it. anyways, im having a problem with it. I'm uploading the .mov but the site is only putting the link up for dl and not a stream. So I have to change the format on this site to mpeg4. SL wont read it then.. can anyone help more please?

Nella, I don't know why it isn't working, but did you try .mp4? Those will stream in SL.