[M4IF Technotes] MPEG4 delivery mechanism for a multi-os demographic?

[Ben Waggoner]

on 1/21/03 19:34, Kelly McNeill at contact   platypuscreations.com wrote:
> I am converting all my audio files to MPEG4 using QuickTime 6
> (utilizing streaming optimized for server)   then placing the MPEG4
> file on a server with Quicktime streaming server to deliver my audio.

    If you're going to encode with QuickTime, make sure you're running QT
6.1 under MacOS X 10.2.  This provides a more flexible and higher quality
MPEG-4 audio codec than other versions.  Definitely make sure you have the
quality mode maxed out.  This will slow encoding down a little bit, but give
a quality boost.
> My question deals with the delivery mechanism.
> 
> If I embed the audio file into the web page, the web browser has to
> have a plug-in to play the MPEG clip. (This begs the question: Do all
> the major alternative computing platforms (BSD, Linux, Solaris, Amiga
> etc) have plug-ins available that will be able to play the embedded
> audio?)

    No.  Many browsers in the wild won't have anything assigned to the
MPEG-4 MIME types or .mp4.
> If not, I will need to tell the web page to launch a player, but I
> don't know of any HTML code that calls upon a generic MPEG4 player
> (Whatever player the OS has designated to play this type of audio).
> Instead, they only call upon specific players.

    Yup.
> What is the best solution for delivering my MPEG4 streaming audio to
> this varying group of alternative computer users?

    I'd say just provide a link to the .mp4, in a web page with instructions
for where to find players for different platforms.  QuickTime is great for
Mac and Win, and RealOne for Win.  For *NIX systems, MPEG4IP is good, but
requires compilation.
Ben Waggoner <http://www.benwaggoner.com>
Compressed Video Consulting, Training, and Encoding
My Book:            http://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
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