Multimedia Examples

Kalachakra Watches - The Watch for World Peace
Kalachakra - Warriors
Kalachakra Warriors - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Vajracharaya audio)

The Vajracharaya audio talk above is probably unauthorized, but it is a definite positive that we should welcome. Better still, we should ourselves host many good dharma audio/visual presentations on our web site to the direct benefit of sentient beings, Kalapa Recordings and Shambhala Publications.

Let John Gorman < jgorman@webbysoft.com> know of any other multimedia examples that may be of interest to us.

Creating RealAudio and RealVideo Content

Order and download RealPublisher 5.0 US$50.00 to create your own multimedia web pages.

Linking Web Pages to the RealServer

Here is the lowdown on how to make .ram files from the RealAudio server documentation library. For example the following "RealVideo Test (28 kbps)" link references the file "glasr28.ram" which contains this single line:

pnm://real.shambhala.org/real/test/glasr28.rm

Note the pnm: protocol prefix. Also note the real.shambhala.org host name.

The following links use the RealServer:

RealAudio Test (28 kbps) 24k
RealVidio Test (28 kbps) 606k
RealVidio Test (56 kbps) 1330k

For security reasons, the RealServer will only serve files located under http://www.shambhala.org/real/... In this case under /real/test. All files under /real... are publicly available.

Secure Http Streaming

http://www.shambhala.org/real/test/glasr28.rm

Note the http: protocol prefix. Also note the www.shambhala.org host name.

RealAudio HTTP Streaming (28 kbps) 24k
RealVidio HTTP Streaming (28 kbps) 606k
RealVidio HTTP Streaming (56 kbps) 1330k

Http streaming is definitely inferior to RealServer performance when the connection is slow or spotty.

When the RealServer is streaming a video and detects a net slowdown it defers the video framing transmission and concentrates all the remaining bandwidth on continuing with the audio presentation without interruption. If the net speeds up again, the audio gets more hi-fi and the video starts framing again. Similar variable-fi tricks keep audio files flowing under poor conditions.

When a RealClient is getting its input from an http stream and the net slows down, it doesn't have the option of skipping the video frames. That is because the http tcp protocol is designed as a complete, error corrected, ordered data pipe. So the RealClient halts the entire presentation during rebuffering. This repeatedly interrupts the flow of the presentation. The up side is *perfect* transmission quality between abysmal gaps.

Best to use the RealServer protocol except where we need security. The RealServer Plus engine has a password security scheme but it costs money. (From what I could see on their site - let me know if that is untrue.)