Creating a RealAudio Events File

The RealAudio system allows you to create real-time on-demand multimedia presentations using the Cevents32 utility (Windows) or Cevents (UNIX). Creating a synchronized multimedia event using the command line tool is a three-step process:

  1. Use a text editor to create an input file specifying the display time for each URL.
  2. Use the Cevents32 or Cevents command line tool to generate a binary file from the text input file.
  3. Place the resulting .rae file in the same directory as the .ra audio file.

RealPlayer can also read local synchronized multimedia files just as the Server does, and can use bandwidth negotiation.


Creating the Input File

Create the Input File.

Generating an Event File

After creating the text version of the input file, you must convert the file to a binary event file. This is done with the command line utility Cevents32 (Windows) or Cevents (UNIX). It uses the following syntax:

Windows

cevents32 <InputTextFile> <OutputEventFile>

UNIX

cevents <InputTextFile> <OutputEventFile>

where:

<InputEventFile> is the file you just created
<OutputEventFile> is the same name as the file with which it will be associated.

For example, to a create synchronized multimedia presentation to accompany paradise.ra, you would generate paradise.rae using the following command:

cevents paradise.txt paradise.rae

Placing Event Files on Your Server

Copy the .rae file to the same directory as your .ra file. The .ra and .rae files must have the same name except for the file extension. RealServer automatically detects the file and send the event information to RealPlayer, which then sends it the Web browser.


Using Synchronized Multimedia from Local Files

RealPlayer can also read local synchronized multimedia files just as the Server does. In order for the local presentation to work with multiple platforms and with both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, without hardcoding the directory structure, you need to follow these steps.

To play a synchronized multimedia file locally:

  1. Place all .rpm/.ram, .ra, HTML and image files in one directory. The starting document should be named Index.html.
  2. Do not use the slash mark (/) in your file names. Use the syntax described in "Creating the Input File," above.
    1. If you will be using the presentation on a Macintosh computer, do not use relative path commands such as "../".

.TXT file - convert into .rae file using Cevents compiler
u 10:00:45.00 &&media&&test2.html

.RAM and .RPM
file:1shapfut.ra

IMAGES
<IMG src="1shapfut.gif">

HREFs
<a href="rasld011.htm">

EMBEDs
<EMBED SRC="lecture5.rpm">


Using Synchronized Multimedia with Bandwidth Negotiation

When you deliver a Synchronized Multimedia presentation using Bandwidth Negotiation, you can choose to deliver the same event for all encoding formats, or you can choose to deliver different events for each encoding format.

You can create a single synchronized multimedia presentation for multiple formats, or you can create a different multimedia presentation for each encoding format. If you are working with previously created content, you can continue to use the previous method to create presentations.

For more information on this topic, see the RealAudio and RealVideo Content Creation Guide.

© 1997 RealNetworks, Inc.