Streaming Media in OpenSim

Streaming media in OpenSim works the same way as in SL. One of the most frequent misconceptions about streaming content in OpenSim is the simulator or regions server is actually doing the streaming. This is not true, all streaming happens outside of the metaverse on a seperate dedicated server. The streaming content is fed directly to Quicktime from the viewer. Generally anything able to be played in Quicktime can be viewed in OpenSim through your viewer. Streaming does not impact the performance of the simulator since all content is sent to the viewer and Quicktime player.

QuickTime 7 Supported Audio/Video Formats

Current supported formats as listed by Apple are:

Supported Video Formats

• Animation
• Apple BMP
• Apple Pixlet (Mac OS X v10.3 only)
• Apple Video
• Cinepak
• Component video
• DV and DVC Pro NTSC
• DV PAL
• DVC Pro PAL
• Graphics
• H.261
• H.263
• H.264
• JPEG 2000
• Microsoft OLE (decode only)
• Microsoft Video 1 (decode only)
• Motion JPEG A
• Motion JPEG B
• MPEG-4 (Part 2)
• Photo JPEG
• Planar RGB
• PNG
• Sorenson Video 2
• Sorenson Video 3
• TGA
• TIFF

Supported Audio Formats

• 24-bit integer
• 32-bit floating point
• 32-bit integer
• 64-bit floating point
• AAC (MPEG-4 Audio)
• ALaw 2:1
• AMR Narrowband
• Apple Lossless Encoder
• IMA 4:1
• MACE 3:1
• MACE 6:1
• MS ADPCM (decode only)
• QDesign Music 2
• Qualcomm PureVoice (QCELP)
• ULaw 2:1

Creating a Media Screen in OpenSim

Now that you understand some of the fundamentals of what is going on with media content in OpenSim you are probably wanting to get started creating a video area so you and your friends can enjoy watching or listening to some media together. The best free script that I have come across is Freeview. The code for this script is listed below and you can simply copy and paste it into a script window to get you started.

General Steps

1. Make sure you have a texture picked out to use as a media texture. Streaming media has to be displayed on a texture and unless you want to see your media playing all over the place make sure the texture is unique to just the prim you want to use as a view screen.
2. Create a prim that will display the media.
3. For a good looking display choose a blank texture with a black color for all sides.
4. Select just the prim face for the screen and make the texture your media texture from Step 1 and choose white for the color.
5. Drop the Freeview script into the Contents tab.
6. In the About Land window Media tab change your Replace Texture to the one in Step 1.
7. In the About Land window General tab make sure the Allow Deed To Group item is checked.

At this point if your script compiled correctly then you should be able to click on the media view screen and a menu will pop up. A good test would be to choose the Video button and then the Set URL button. In the chat window type /1 and then a URL to a video that you know exists on a streaming server. The video should begin playing within a minute or so.

Categories:Media