Two Choices
Like most streaming media environments, Real G2 offers two choices in playback. You can either link to the file for playback in the RealPlayer. Or you can embed the file for streaming playback within the Web page. In the practice of teaching streaming media production,I find that most producers can easilly handle linking for playback in the external RealPlayer. But for some reason, embedding in Web page can be a trick at times. So I will start with linking to external playback with the RealPlayer first.

The RAM File
If I am going to lose people in understanding RealMedia, I always have the greatest chance of that happening when I start talking about the RAM file. It's not really that complicated to understand. But I think people want it to be more complicated than it is and that is where the trouble begins.

For a little background information, I want to spend a moment talking about what happens when a user clicks on a RealMedia link. RealMedia is not the World Wide Web. What that means is that a browser needs additional software in order for you to see or hear the streaming media. That is pretty much the same with most streaming media. The Web is an open environment that allows other technologies to be plugged into it as needed.

So when you click on a RealMedia link, your Web browser gets confused. It looks at all this foreign data coming at it and tries to determine what to do with it. The server says to the browser, "hey, this is RealMedia!" To that, the browser says to itself, "hmm, I think I have a player or plug-in lying around here somewhere that can handle that!" And so after the browser looks at its internal list of available helper applications and plug-ins, the data is handed off to the software that can actually display the data properly.

With RealMedia, this hand off requires a file called "RAM." That is short for "Real metafile." Sound complicated? It isn't. The purpose of the RAM file is to make sure the streaming data is passed on to the RealPlayer. When you click on a RealMedia link on a Web page, you are actually clicking on a link to a RAM file. The RAM file contains the Internet address to your streaming media. The browser receives that RAM file and forwards the information to the RealPlayer. The RealPlayer reads the file and knows where to find your streaming media. Then it starts to play.

So How Do I Create a RAM File?
A RAM file is the easiest thing in the world to create. It is simply a text file just like your HTML. Open a text editor and type the address to your RealMedia files on the server. It should look something like this:

http://www.myserver.com/myfolder/myvideo.rm

Then, save the file with a ".ram" extension. That's it. If that seems too simple, wipe your mind clean. A RAM file is a text file with an address to your streaming media and a ".ram" extension on the filename. Nothing more.

Hold on to that RAM file. I will be making a link to it in Web page in a minute.