RealMedia - Metafiles/Playlists
Metafiles are typically text files that contain instructions for a media player application. Metafiles typically tell the browser which media player application to launch. They can also point to the clip(s) to be played. For this reason, reference movies and playlists are considered types of metafiles.
The most common metafiles for RealMedia are .ram files. The simplest .ram file is a reference movie file. This file contains just a URL of the clip to be played. For example:
#This is a sample of a .ram file that points to a clip on the
#streaming server.
rtsp://real.cc.uga.edu/username/clip.rm
The # symbol is used to designate a comment. Lines that begin with the # symbol are ignored by the RealPlayer application.
Additional commands can be included in the .ram file by adding a ? to the end of the url and then adding variables and their values separated by an &. Title, author, clipinfo, start time, and stop time are just a few of the other variables that can be defined within the .ram file.
#This is a sample of a .ram file that points to a clip on the
#streaming server.
#This clip starts at 55 seconds into the clip and stops at 1 minute
#
and 25 seconds into the clip.
rtsp://real.cc.uga.edu/username/clip.rm?start=55&end=1:25
For more information on creating .ram files see RealNetworks Ram File Summary.
