Playing Quicktime movies from a server...

Trevor DeVore lists at mangomultimedia.com
Wed Jan 25 14:04:20 EST 2006


On Jan 25, 2006, at 10:40 AM, David Bovill wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience of how to do this?
>
>> QuickTime video can be encoded to stream off of a video server, or  
>> it can be encoded to stream off of any standard web server like  
>> you're already using to host your current web site. This second  
>> method of streaming is the most popular and is commonly referred  
>> to as http streaming, or QuickTime progressive download (a.k.a  
>> fast start).
> Ideally I'd like to be able to play then without having to download  
> the movie first - and then have the data locally.
>
>
>> If you specify a URL for a streaming QuickTime movie file,  
>> Revolution displays the movie sequentially as it downloads.  
>> Otherwise, Revolution must download the entire file before you can  
>> play it. To pre-fetch a file from the Internet in order to speed  
>> up access to it, use the load command before visiting the card  
>> that holds the player or image that references the file's URL.
>
> OK - but in either case where is the downloaded QuickTime file and  
> how can I copy it to a permanent store?

David,

If I understand correctly, you can use the EnhancedQT external to  
accomplish this.  I do this in my apps by doing this:

1) If the movie does not already exist locally then set the filename  
of the player to the http url.
2) QuickTime begins downloading the file progressively.  This means  
the video will playback while it downloads but you can't skip ahead  
to a point that isn't downloaded yet like you could with a streaming  
file.
3) When it comes time to unload the movie from the player you can  
save it locally.  First use qtGetMovieLoadState to make sure the  
movie has downloaded entirely.  If it has then use qtSaveAs to save  
the movie file locally.

This works really well in that the user can start viewing the movie  
instantly but you can still cache it for later viewing with no wait.

You can look at the enhancedQT external here: http:// 
mangomultimedia.com/developer/revolution/index.html

You should use the 1.x version which is marked as beta but everything  
works fine and it is the version I use in my projects.

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Multimedia
trevor at mangomultimedia.com





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