Playing Machinima Inworld

[Lexie Linden]

Let's dicsuss tips and techniques for playing machinima in world!

[Chantal Harvey]

Great idea!

I am inviting everybody that wants to learn about machinima to come to the weekly MachinimaMondays meetings. All welcome, bring your questions and share your work, follow presentations and workshops, talk and meet musicians, actors, foley artists and machinima people. all welcome!

2 pm:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Twas/39/157/25

7 pm:  http://slurl.com/secondlife//81/87/41

:womanwink:    Chantal Harvey

[Osprey Therian]

There are a couple of ways to play machinima inworld.

For Viewer2 Shared Media create a prim (then usually you want to select one face). On the Texture tab click the + and add the media url. You'll want to alter the shape to get the right roportions, and in some cases you'll want to show just the movie not the surrounding webpage. For Youtube add _popup after "watch" in the url to get full coverage (like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pVndLSP4GgQ).

You can even attach it to yourself! Another possibility is streaming onto it by Ustream TV or similar.

Parcel Media, available through all viewers, is limited to the parcel itself, and to use it you must have parcel media rights. The movie must be in a QT format, and an easy way to use it is to upload a QT-type video to Blip.tv then stream the original from there. There are scripted televisions for parcels, and some attempt to corral the everchanging YouTube mpg-formatted videos.

[Asil Ares]

We stream the machinimas we make about NeoVictoria in-world using the parcel stream.  Here's the copy for the note-card we give to help folks get their media started.  Suggestions for improvement will be appreciated; I'd especially appreciate a current link to the Lab's Official Third Party Viewer directory (the only one I can find points to the wiki). Thanks!

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NC Name: How to Stream Media in SecondLife

NC Description: A media streaming TIP sheet for watching media in-world

NC Body Text:

Its possible to listen to music and to watch videos that are hosted outside of Second Life when you're in-world.  Here are some tips to help you listen to the music we play here AND to watch the movies we stream into the simulations.

FIRST PREPARE YOUR COMPUTER

To view any streaming video in SecondLife, your computer must have the latest version of Quicktime installed.  Quicktime is a free software tool from Apple Computers.  You can download it here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/

If you don't have Quicktime installed, movies that are streamed into the simulation using the land parcel settings will NOT play for you. 

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WATCHING VIDEOS ON SL VIEWER 1

If you're using SL Viewer 1.XX or a third-party variant, from the top menu drop-down, go to Edit > Preferences > Audio & Video (tab), Streaming Preferences, [check] "Play Streaming Media When Available", [check] "Automatically play media". Also, be sure the Volume sliders for "Master" and "Media" are both far enough to the right so that you can hear the content.

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WATCHING VIDEOS ON VIEWER 2

For SL Viewer 2.XX or a third-party variant, its a little different ...from the top menu, its ME > Preferences > Sound & Media (tab) > [check] Media slider to enabled and [check] Allow Media to auto-play.

Here's a helpful URL if you want to learn more: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Playing_media

Here's the official SL instructions for parcel media: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Land-parcel-media/ta-p/700097

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LISTENING TO MUSIC

If you want to watch the videos, turn the music stream off  or you will have both playing at the same time and that will not be a good thing. You can toggle the music settings off the media preferences. 

We stream music from Radio Riel here ...specifically their Steampunk station.  Here's its URL if you want to listen to it elsewhere:  http://apollo.slserver.com:8402

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WHAT'S A VIEWER?

Sometimes called the viewer or the client, this is the software that you installed on your computer so you could log into Second Life.

Not sure what viewer you're using?  Go to HELP from the top menu and click on  "About SecondLife".  That will open a window advising what viewer (or client) you're currently running on your computer. 

The Lab offers several different viewers folks can us to connect to the grid.  See http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/

There are also many third-party developers that make viewers people can use.  Here's a URL that explains it:  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers