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Last week in part one I told you how to build a simple screen for watching videos on your land. Today I’m going to show you how to get video actually playing on it. Second Life only plays Quick Time movies, so this is what you’ll need to look for. If you don’t have your own streaming video server (most of us don’t!), you’ll need to find one. If you’re not certain whether a movie is in Quick Time format, look at the extension on the file name. If it’s “.mov”, it’s Quick Time. You’ll also have to have Quick Time installed on your computer. Before you can watch video in Second Life. Quick Time is free. You can download it at www.apple.com/quicktime. The next step is to find videos you can play on your land. One source of Quick Time videos that you can play on your land is NASA, which has downloadable videos at www.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html. We’ll use NASA’s podcast about the Kepler Mission for finding habitable planets as an example. The URL is http://kepler.nasa.gov/media/mpeg_files/ARC-KeplerOverview-480p.mov. Now that we have a video URL, we’ll set our land to play it. To do this, we right -click anywhere on our land and then click “About Land” in the popup pie chart. The About Land window, will popup; click the Media tab in it. With the Media tab selected, you’ll see “Media Type”, “Media URL”, and “Replace Texture”. The picture at the left shows the Media box for Second Life land before you’ve changed anything.. |
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The box on the right is where you enter the media URL
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 The Media box after making your changes |
On the right side you’ll see “Set”. Click “Set”. This will open up a new window to the right. Copy and paste “http://kepler.nasa.gov/media/mpeg_files/ARC-KeplerOverview-480p.mov” into it and then click OK. If you’ve done it correctly, the URL automatically appeared in Media URL and “Movie” appeared in “Media Type”, as you’ll see in the picture on the left. The final step is to set the media texture. We do this similarly to how we did for the screen. First, left-click the texture box (to the right of “Replace Texture”. This opens up the Pick Texture window. Type “default media texture” in the white search box and when it appears in the list of textures, click Select. Before playing the movie, make certain that you’ve enabled media in your Preferences. Click Edit, then click “Preferences” and click the Audio&Video tab. Make sure there’s a check in the checkbox next to “Play Streaming Media When Available You are now ready to play your movie! If you’ve done everything right, in the lower right of your Second Life window you’ll see a small icon of an old-fashioned two reel projector with an arrow to its right. Click the arrow. The screen you made should turn black and then in a few moments, the Kepler movie should begin playing on it. You’ve now created a simple, crude screen. You’ll eventually want one that’s scripted for additional features, and seating that automatically sets your view to the screen, but the screen you’ve just made is a start and will allow you to watch or to test media on your land. |
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hey nice blog! looking forward to reading your new posts!