Breakthrough!I've been studying how to play media files in parcels of late-- I'm quite excited about how to maximize this aspect of Second Life. We already know how to play a straight feed of MP4 style video into your parcel, that's been covered at length by Torley's tutorials, and I even took a stab at illustrating how I accomplished this feat. This is the simple method that we play Movie Serials with at Polymath Rock. For more details see the PARCEL MEDIA Video Tutorials page on the SL wiki if you wish to read some authoritative source material on the subject.
I know that it is possible to play Flash movies (such as Youtube uses) in a parcel somehow, but I have not had much success with finding a definitive answer on how to accomplish this yet. I have managed to have HTML pages appear on prim screens with no difficulty, using a method similar to the standard video-stream-on-a-prim method, but Flash pages always eluded me. Recent research into Torley's blog posts on inworld media and Vlad Bjornsen's excellent two-parter on Video in SL (see The Media files, sidebar, right) suggested the following method for YouTube (at least).
The method I have learned relies on the fact that Google (and YouTube) are now converting video files to higher quality MP4s. You still can't plug a youtube film URL into the media tab, but you CAN migrate the MP4 version off of YouTube and rehost the file on another service that can generate a stream URL. For my example, I found a copy of DUCK SOUP by the Marx Brothers on Youtube, broken up into 9 Youtube-friendly bits.
The Simple Migration to Blip.TV method
Note: I only use public domain, open source and files that I have permission to play, unless acting in ignorance. If a file is on YouTube, it is alleged to be cleared for public viewing in advance. I am not responsible for individuals using this method to display licensed material on their parcels without permission.
There is nothing earthshaking about this methodology; it is a distillation of methods posted on Shiny Life and Torley Lives! blogs.
1) Visit the Google Operating System blog page on how to download YouTubes as MP4s. Add the bookmarklet called "Get Youtube Video" on this page to your web browser. I used Firefox.
2) IN YouTube, on the video of your choice, click the bookmarklet. A new menu item name will appear near the embedding information called "Download Video". Click. A small window will open asking to download a file. A generic "Video.mp4" file will download to your desktop (rename this something meaningful as you proceed). Test this file with QuickTime Player. If it plays on your machine, it will play in your parcel.3) Create a BLIP.TV account. Blip.TV is a video hosting service not unlike YouTube. The big difference is that it hosts files in a method that allows you to retrieve an URL linking directly to the MP4 file. Using the UPLOAD menu on BLIP.TV, upload the renamed files to your account. Note a few things about BLIP.TV, they have extensive file comment fields which allows one to comment about the current license for the file uploaded. Where the license is unknown, the default is "All Rights Reserved". I wouldn't rely on this too much-- if BLIP.TV gets a complaint about hosting a licensed file, it will likely yank the account.
4) After Uploading File(s): Go to the EMBED link. Click. On the right will be several embedding options-- BLIP.TV provides more than one way to embed your file, either flash or MP4/Quicktime. The default is FLASH. Change to MP4/Quicktime and update the embedding information (there's a button to do that). Look through the code for embedding. Eventually, you will see a string that is a URL that points to a file that ends with ".MP4". Select this URL, copy to a text file (or leave in clipboard and go over to Second Life).
5) Launch Second Life. Using our old friend the Media Tab, paste the URL you captured in step 4 (above) and paste here (the screenshot is from the earlier tutorial, but it amounts to the same thing):
6. Click on the Media PLAY button and enjoy.
I took some time to migrate all of the DUCK SOUP clips (my favorite Marx Bros film after all) to BLIP.TV using this method, and allow me to display the results of my labors:
(That's Duck Soup, playing on the Big Screen, at Polymath Upstairs' new bowling alley).
Some Notes:
YouTube Videos are broken up into smallish files-- there is a file upload maximum in effect. So you can't expect to download an entire feature film or anything of that sort. I believe this method works best for films that can be broken up into short segments (like a Marx Brothers movie, perhaps?) or movie serials, or cartoons... but MOST ESPECIALLY, in world machinima. If you are playing a series of uploaded films in a sequence, take the time to research the stream URLs of ALL of the MP4 files, and past them into a notecard in world for organization purposes. You'll be very glad you did. I found that the quality of the viewing experience depends entirely on the connection of the viewer-- my wireless connection took a while to load, but played through from start to finish once it had.
Enjoy! And drop in to see Duck Soup some time.
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1 comments:
Here goes nothing. Just tried this method and it seems to be working. Let's see if my movie plays for anybody else, or for myself next time I log in. So far the YouTube method I learned from Torley's tutorial meant I had to get a new mp4 url and paste it in every time I logged on, or the movie wouldn't play.
Neb
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