Advice on hosting M4a enhanced podcasts / Quicktime

[MrWood]

I'm having trouble adding some enhanced podcasts (audio with series of embedded images) to my site and would appreciate a few pointers in the right direction. Has any one else found a straight foward way way to do this ?

 

The files are AAC with the extension .m4a

The only player I've found that will work at all is the Google video player but that crops the images.

I'm currently trying to embed quicktime a player using jquery but it's not working and I'm not sure if it handles this file type.

I've looked at the source code of other sites where it works and they use wordpress plugins that wont work on a free hosted wordpress site.

[Hacksawbob]

Hi usually, m4a is audio only. I would look at the software that you are using to encode your podcast. If you want video and sound windows movie maker will churn out a WMV. imovie an m4v. upload it and link to it, most browsers will handle these files OK

[MrWood]

Thanks for the reply.

I can already create audio or video files no trouble, the m4a format I'm struggling with allows for a series of still images to be displayed at selected points within an audio file. It's only really used by itunes and ios devices. I'm using it to give to kids as an audio of the theory notes, with diagrams etc shown at relevant points. Essentially the same as a video file, but a far smaller file size for downloading and storing on their device.

As I said, I can now create the enhanced podcast file no problem, and it plays in itunes and on ios devices perfectly - I just want to allow them to see the same file on a web site without having to re-encode it as a video file first. Not an insurmountable problem, just an irritation.

[mac_shinobi]

How to embed Audio in Web Page

 

CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">



AUTOPLAY="true" CONTROLLER="ture" 
PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">

 

Where VALUE="" would be the path to the m4a file so if you uploaded the file into a folder called audio and your domain / website url was PlayMusic.co.uk | Play Music then the path would be

 

PlayMusic.co.uk | Play Music

 

Hence

 

CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">



AUTOPLAY="true" CONTROLLER="true" 
PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">

 

This would be using the quicktime plugin to play said file - iOS Devices use quicktime afaik and quicktime should be able to play m4a files ( best to test though )

 

In the code sample provided as per said website, am not sure if

 

CONTROLLER="ture"

 

I Think this is meant to be

 

CONTROLLER="true"

 

JQuery article

 

http://www.solitude.dk/archives/embedquicktime/

Edited January 17, 2012 by mac_shinobi

[MrWood]

Thanks for the code. I've tried it out but I just get a pale qt logo with a question mark over it - no media is played ?

[Arthur]

Based on this example, it looks like you simply have to change the extension on your enhanced podcasts from M4A to M4B.

 

[MrWood]

Thanks:

That returns the same problem as before, a pale qt symbol with a question mark on it !

 

I tried your code and it works just fine. It gives audio with a series of changing still images, just as I am looking for. Do you think it could be the mime types on my server ?

I have other video and audio files hosted there already with no problems. I've tried just changing the extension to the file on the server and that does not work.

I' tried referring to the file with a local address and also doesn't work.

Edited January 17, 2012 by MrWood

[Arthur]

Do you think it could be the mime types on my server?

Possibly. What web server software are you using (Apache, IIS, Nginx)?

 

In the embed code, are you using absolute or relative URLs to the M4Bs?

[MrWood]

I'm using an IIS server as I previously had an MS access application running on there and I'm using absolute URL references.

 

[GrumbleDook]

It cannot find the resource ... if I load the URL directly into a browser or Quicktime it should pull it, but it fails to find it. Does it work okay if you try to pull the file internally?

[MrWood]

Yes the file works fine from my desktop and played in itunes - if played in quick time player I get audio, but no pictures. I'm starting to think that maybe the working versions I see on the internet are actually video files created from m4a enhanced podcast files ?

 

Arthurs' file reference above "www.k9cast.com/casts/k9c-2005-06-27.m4b" works just fine in quicktime and plays the way I was expecting.

[GrumbleDook]

Arthur's file comes up fine for me too ... but not yours. Can you put up a test page on the server? test.html? And then an image? Do you get to these fine? I'll try them too.

 

The other option is to use Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine to host the files ... I used to do this for a podcast I helped curate.

[MrWood]

I've added a file called test to the root directory where the podcast was. It should show up an issuu reader for a document on their system, it works on my machine.

[GrumbleDook]

The test file works fine. The only other thing I can think of is MIME type and making sure .m4a is set for audio/x-m4a

[MrWood]

Thanks for your help, I'll contact the host company tomorrow and see what they say. It's not worth spending any more time on. It's amazing what I can find to occupy me when endless coursework marking appears !