Serving Real Media

1. Make sure that the web server on your Virtual Server is configured to properly handle the Real media file extensions, namely .rm, .ra, .ram, and optionally .rpm.

   If your Virtual Server was set up later than December 15, 1997 then your ~/www/conf/mime.types file includes the necessary MIME types. If your Virtual Server was set up prior to December 15, 1997 then simply add the following two lines to your ~/www/conf/mime.types file:

    
   audio/x-pn-realaudio           ram rm ra
   audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin    rpm
   

   If you download the ~/www/conf/mime.types file to your local computer using FTP, be sure you upload it back to your Virtual Server in ASCII format. An alternative to editing the ~/www/conf/mime.types file is to simply copy the ~/www/conf/mime.types file from the /usr/local/contrib directory on your Virtual Server host machine. To do this type:

   % cp /usr/local/contrib/mime.types ~/www/conf
   

   NOTE: You will need to Restart Your Virtual Server Web Server after making changes to the mime.types file.

2. Copy your encoded Real media files (files with the .rm and .ra extensions) to your Virtual Server via FTP (save these files in the following directory:

   FreeBSD
   ~/usr/local/realserverg2/Content
   
   BSD/OS
   ~/usr/local/pnserver-VERSION/content
   

   These directories are the "BasePath" where RealServer looks for Real media files. You can change these by modifying your RealServer server.cfg file. Be sure to FTP any Real media files in BINARY mode (not ASCII mode).

3. Use a text editor to create a metafile containing a RealAudio or RealVideo URL. The contents of your file should be in the following form:

   pnm://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/MEDIAFILE.rm

   Change YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME to the domain name of your Virtual Server and MEDIAFILE to the name of the Real media file you uploaded to your content directory in the previous step.

4. Next, save the above metafile as a text file with the .ram extension, mediafile.ram, for example. FTP the metafile to your Virtual Server (in ASCII mode since it is a text file). Metafiles should be saved in your ~/www/htdocs directory hierarchy.

5. Finally, reference the metafile as a hyperlink in your HTML document. For example:

   <a href="mediafile.ram">
   <a href="/support/addonhelp/multimedia/realserver/media/sampleaudio.ram">
   

Working Examples

Audio Clip Example       Video Clip Example