The very first Sound Bytes showed us how to use the wizards in RealProducer to create and publish a simple webpage with RealAudio. While these wizards are still available in RealProducer 8, some may want to have greater control over how their RealAudio is linked from their pages.

In this issue we’ll take a look at the different ways in which we can create a link to a RealAudio file, to be played in an external window. (Besides using the RealProducer wizards, that is.)

The most obvious method would be to link directly to the RealAudio file itself.

   <A HREF="music.ra">Listen to music!</A>

The file does not have to be in the same directory, so we can also do this:

   <A HREF="media/music.ra">Listen to music!</A>

This is the simplest method; one only needs to create the RealAudio file, upload it, and link to it. However, it does not afford as much versatility as the others that we’re coming to.

Suppose you want to have a “Song of the Week” that you will change every week. You want to link to this song from several of your pages, but don’t want to go around editing each page every week.

To get around this, you can create a RealMedia Metafile (*.ram). This ram file will serve as a kind of pointer to the actual RealAudio file. You can link to the ram file from all your pages:

   <A HREF="media/SongOfTheWeek.ram">Song of the Week</A>

The ram file is a text file containing just one line, the address of the RealAudio file itself:

   http://www.oocities.org/someone/media/week1.ra

and the following week the link can be changed to:

   http://www.oocities.org/someone/media/week2.ra

Hence all you have to change is the ram file...no need to go through all your pages to update a link. The ram file can be created using your favorite text editor. Simply change the file extension to ‘.ram’ after saving as a text file.

This is effectively the same as what the wizards in the RealProducer program do. If you have access to a RealServer, however, you can make use of RealNetwork’s own rtsp (RealTime Straming Protocol) instead of regular http. If you choose to do so, your ram file should read thus:

   rtsp://www.oocities.org/someone/media/week1.ra

As has been discussed in previous instalments, the rtsp protocol allows the RealServer to select the best way to send your sound clip to the listener. This requires that your RealAudio clip be in SureStream format, though. (See the November 2000 article for more details.)

You could also create a playlist using a ram file, simply by listing the RealAudio files in the order you want them to be played:

   http://www.oocities.org/someone/media/song1.ra
   http://www.oocities.org/someone/media/song2.ra
   http://www.oocities.org/someone/media/song3.ra

Once again, you can use rtsp instead of http if your files are going to be on a RealServer.

And if you cannot really be bothered to create the ram file youself, RealServer offers an utility called “ramgen” that will do the work for you. That is, provided you have access to a RealServer.

Your link should look something like one of the following:

   http://realserver.someserver.com:8080/ramgen/
      media/song.ra?altplay=oldsong.ra

   http://204.71.154.5/ramgen/some/path/sample.smil?embed

and we’ll want to know exactly what all that means:

You may recall that we dealt with bandwidth issues in the November 2000 issue. One of the bandwidth management techniques mentioned involved the use of a SMIL file to switch between different files for different connection speeds. The above methods will also work for these SMIL files; simply replace the location of the Real Audio (.ra) file with that of the SMIL file. If you are using RealServer, the rtsp protocol and ramgen should also work just fine.

Of course, what I have listed above is by no means exhaustive. I’m sure that there are at least a few more ways to create a link that plays RealAudio in an external window...but they could be really ungainly techniques. These are basically the easiest or most effective ways to do so, and should be sufficient to deal with most needs. And if all fails, there’s always RealProducer. =)

In the next issue, we’ll take a look at the different ways in which you can put embed a RealPlayer in your webpage, allowing visitors to play your media without opening a separate RealPlayer window.