John McIntosh wrote:
Any ideas on a script that would sequentially load and play sound files.
I'm not trying to "blast" anyone's sensibilities. I tried top do this
and couldn't make it work.
First, there is no general method for playing all types of sound files
on all sorts of players. About the best you can do is write code to
stream sound and/or video to specific players that will work on most
recent browsers. Since most modern computers have the WMP, that should
be your first target. Also many also add a path for the Real player,
since many have the Real player in addition to or instead of the WMP.
On a network where you can specify the type of players installed, you
can of course use any type of player you wish to install as the
official one for the network. This could include Winamp, QT, or many
other players that are not used as often. You must also select an
audience. Do you want to stream sound so it can be played on a dialup
connection, or do you want to stream at a much higher bit rate that
will give much better quality on a broadband connection. Many
commercial sites provide 2 or 3 streams at different bit rates.
Sometimes the code allows the correct stream to be selected
automatically for the browser connection speed detected.
Next, if you use a wma audio file along with the required wax
redirector file, you need no script to play sequentially. The xml wax
redirector file can be written with as many sound file links as you
wish. Much the same applies for the Real player that can have a rm file
with the sound and a ram redirector file. The ram file can include
several sound links that will play sequentially. In addition, the most
recent Real players support nearly all of SMIL 2, which is built into
them. SMIL is designed for media presentations and will allow you to
mix audio, video, text, etc content and exactly control the time of
appearance of each object either in sequence, parallel, or a mixture
thereof.
You will find more details about how this is done in my media pages
that can be reached at
http://www.cwdjr.info/media/playersRoot.php .
Although I am using xhtml 1.1 served properly as application/xhtml+xml,
you can just as well use html 4.01 strict if you wish to avoid a php
include at the top of the page used to convert code for browsers,
including IE6, that do not support the mentioned mime type. Both Real
and Microsoft can provide free encoders for their formats in case you
do not have one.