I just installed Real Server Basic to play with it...very easy install and seems to work.

Is anyone out there using Real Server Basic or Plus on a RAQ4i to stream video? A lot of video? Any comments on performance or things to watch out for? I'm looking for any tips from experienced users...

Also, what user/group do you run the service as? I see in the admin section you can change the user. Just curious what people have done on this for security reasons...

Thanks!
Webbcite

I am still not sure of advantages of having a streaming server
I use Video for Windows Media (.wmv) files on my site and its a streaming format in itself and can be streamed from either a windows media server(windows) or over http.
I havent done much benchmarking nor do I have a lot of users right now, so it seems to perform well. But if someone can point out the advantages of Real Video Server, or for that matter , Quicktime Darwin Server over http streaming, please let us know. My main concern is I only have 1 Raq that is the main webserver and if I setup a separate streaming server on the same machine, I want it to serve video over http port as well, because many people watch videos from work where firewalls essentially close all the ports except for http, ftp and possibly telnets

How much data transfer u r looking for?? and how many users i ve been doing it for 3 years lemme know what r u trying to do.... birt rate etc etc

Basically just curious what experiences others have had with it. I am playing with it, but have heard that most don't even use it because you don't really need it to stream. What is your take on it?

Also, what user/group do you run your rmserver as? I tried changing it to another user/group and couldn't log back into the admin.

I created a user just for it, and I used to stream .rm files via the RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol). I eventually had to take it down for the time being because my system was always running out of memory (256MB on the RAQ)... Until I transition to one of the new linux boxes I just have .wmv files for download.

To answer the other guys question, the reason to have a real server is so you can have 1 file with mutiple encoding streams in it. So when a person connects it plays the stream the most appropriate for them, if the bandwidth lags then it goes to a lower stream, if it gets better it goes higher. Windows Media just basically does a HTTP download and starts playing the video as soon as it gets enough data, there really is nothing "streaming" about it...

Also with the real server you can do live broadcasts, you feed the server a live stream and in turn people can connect to it to watch that. We were going to set it up to have a live feed from our LAN party but like I said, the server kept running out of memory.

Unless you have a specific need to run a real server, it's best to stick with just having .wmv files for http download, 98% of your users should be able to support that.

This feature can also wind up being a PITA. I did some streaming media for a client last year that was for upload to YahooBroadcast.com It was sent in one speed format and they reformatted into multiple streams. The problem wound up being, if you did not have a huge amount of bandwidth, the clips wound up being slide shows. Or the graphics looked horrible. They were all encoded in a fairly high bandwidth format but all were very small files due to the length of the clips. It was for a television show so the quality look of the clips was more important to us than the ability to truly stream. What made it even worse, broadcast.com does not allow the user to download the file in "full strength" so if you did not have at least a 500kbps connection, the looked like crap.

I now "stream" everything in html and it works out fine for me.

Shortness

Hi ..

I'm just a student .. I'm tring to install Real Media Server but on package one of this offer..
http://www.rackshack.net/specsamd.asp

Can you please tell me how to do so .. I'm afraied I couldn't do so .. I need to install it to have events live broadcasting...

The server is taken only for this action ... so how can I install the trial version first ?.. then .. I'll put the profisional version..

Thanks,

Doesnt matter what distro of Linux u got. Its fairly very easy to install. Thing is to know how to stream and properly streaming. Email me at munaf@quicksols.com and i will help u set it up.
Mohammad Majeed
QuickSols Inc.

Would anyone here be willing to give me a copy of the streaming server?

derek

I have been using Windows Media to stream video for over 1 year. Why I use wmv format is becasue the quality and the file size is better than real and quick time.

As for high bandwidth server for streaming, it's not necessary. Only thing you need to do is add some query at the end of the streaming path and the media player will understand which bandwidth to use.

But RS only has Linux server, so I can't install Windows Media Server. If you put wmv file under linux, it's not streaming, it's just http download.

Hi,

I've installed rmserver., but till now I'm not able to run it correctly to start streeming.

anybody may help me starting my rmserver?!