Is there any way to Sync Media (Attached media or Parcel Media?)

[Diana Tyran]

Is there any way to sync media between multiple avatars? ie: I'm streaming a video through Dropbox onto Secondlife and one of my friends comes in late, is there any way for me to automatically catch him up to the same point everyone else is at? I've seen a few TVs in SL (Like Icarus) that claim they can sync video but I believe that only works with select providers like Youtube.

Or, is there any way for me to use Attached Media to sync everyone? I've attempted to use the control bar at the top of the media object to change the part the movie/video is at but I've recieved inconclusive results from people if it works or not.

[Monti Messmer]

Hello, that is the nature of streaming media to several end-points.

It depends on the listeners PC, Internet speed, Network buffer settings, location ....

The SL viewer cannot know the stream position and it´s the viewer that had to sync with other viewers, servers just push data from start to end.

Even just music is always different on different viewers, what makes it hard to sync stage-shows to music, something singers, dancers ... complain alot about.

Monti

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

This is a tricky question.

If one of those TVs is connected to a video/audio stream that is served via Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP, also known as "QuickTime Streaming", but it's actually an Internet protocol), then everybody will see precisely the same stream; that's the whole point of the RTSP protocol, which is fully supported by SL (and yes, I've tested it often ).

Sadly, however, people are moving away from supporting an Internet standard, and inventing their own ways to send video over the Internet. Since, except for videoconferencing, most people will watch videos individually, most video websites will use either Flash Video or an older technique known as "progressive download" (basically what you're doing when you share a file via Dropbox). There is absolutely no way to get everybody in sync this way (to address precisely this issue of lack of synchronization, that's why RTSP was developed... in 1998!).

RTSP streaming providers charge an eye and a tooth for their services, even though it's pretty easy to install a server, assuming you have infinite bandwidth and unlimited CPUs

There are, however, other tricks. Since Media-on-a-Prim is effectively a full browser (supporting Flash!), there are a few applications that you can use to get sync'ed video. For instance, you can try Ustream.tv (if you don't mind the constant adverts) for that. But you will need something that grabs the video from your desktop and sends it through a streaming provider (on the Mac, you can use CamTwist for that, it's very easy to use and free).

Allegedly, Google Hangouts also works that way. You just set up a conference and select "Hangouts on Air", which will stream via YouTube (for an unlimited time), and apparently there is also a way to stream an existing YouTube video through Hangouts. I have tried this out twice but was unsure on how "realtime" it really is. The advantage is that it's completely free, has reasonable quality, and doesn't need any extra software (except the GoogleVideoChat plugin for your browser, which is just installed once). The disadvantage is mostly that I'm not sure how "live" the stream actually is, when seen from YouTube; you will just have to experiment...

Search for "free streaming" on Google, and try all those websites. There are so many options that perhaps these days there are some allowing you to stream directly a video without needing to grab it...