Video Player Information

Getting Started

What you need --

You need RealPlayer installed on your computer. Both the free version and the enhanced version can be downloaded from RealNetworks using your Web browser. Your computer must have sound support. RealPlayer G2 is the newest player. It is available for Windows 95/98/NT4. There is a beta version of G2 for the Macintosh. RealPlayer 5.0 is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2, Macintosh, SUN OS, Solaris. RealPlayer is not available for HP UX, IBM AIX, or DEC UNIX.

If you would like to print out the slides for this talk as a bundle,  you will also need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. This software is available free from Adobe Systems.

Testing your RealPlayer --

You can test your RealPlayer by pointing your Web browser to any one of the sources listed on RealNetworks' site.

Our Video Clips

If you are not familiar with streaming audio and video, it provides audio and video by buffering the data being streamed from the server before playback.  The media can be encoded using several templates to provide optimal playback quality based on bandwidth. 

For some video clips, the quality may be insufficient to make out the details of transparencies. For the clips we recommend that you view the images of the scanned transparencies in your browser in parallel to the streaming audio/video transmission. As an alternative, you can also print them out beforehand using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Newer recordings are being made at a higher resolution (640x480), and it may be possible to read the slides directly on the RealPlayer video window.

Note to RealPlayer G2 users --

We have begun using the new SureStream technology that permits bandwidth negotiation. For these types of connections there will be only a single link to click on and your player will negotiate the speed with the server for the best connection based on how good your network connection is. (It will even adjust automatically if network conditions change.)

Dennis Wisinski, SCS Applications Group
SLAC    February 21, 1999