Digital Commons at Penn State

Videos uploaded to the ITS Streaming Server should be saved in QuickTime format. Our streaming server will not support Flash videos, Windows Media, or Real Video. In addition, all videos uploaded to the streaming server should have what are called “hinted tracks”. These tracks enable the videos to be streamed bit by bit in real time without waiting for the whole video to download. You can tell if a video has a hinted track by opening it in QuickTime Pro 7 ($30 upgrade to the QuickTime Player available from Apple) and selecting Movie Properties from the Window menu.

You can see in the photo above that the movie has a Sound Track, a Video Track, a Hinted Video Track, and a Hinted Sound Track. The movie below does not have hinted tracks and will give you an “Unsupported Media” error if you upload it to the streaming server.

If you have a video that is already compressed but does not have a hinted track, all you need to do to prepare it for streaming is to go to the File menu and select Export

and from there choose Movie to Hinted Movie from the pull‐down menu.

If you are exporting a new movie from iMovie, Final Cut, or QuickTime Pro you need
to instead export using the Movie to QuickTime Movie settings.

After clicking the Options button next to the pull‐down menu, you will need to use the following settings. Note that Prepare for Internet Streaming is checked and Hinted Streaming is selected from the pull‐down menu:

To adjust the video settings, click the settings button under the Video category.

Use the settings above for best results on a DSL connection, which is the lowest broadband connection we normally support.

Click OK to get out of the video settings window. Use the Size button to set your movie size. Again we recommend not going too big so that people on limited broadband connections can view the video. 320x240 or something similar is usually best. When all your settings are ready, click the OK button to export your movie. The time it takes to export will depend on how long your movie is and how fast your
computer is.

Uploading to the Streaming Server:
Once your movie is done exporting, you are ready to upload it to the streaming server. Go to http://streaming.psu.edu/ and click the Login link. Once you log in, you will see your streaming account. Click the link that says “Upload Movie”.

On the ensuing window you will click the Choose File button and locate the movie on your hard drive. Give the movie a title in the Movie Title field and add any movie information you wish in the Movie Description field. Be sure to check the “By uploading this file…” checkbox before clicking the Upload Movie button.

Once the movie is uploaded, you will be given the opportunity to set the movie’s access permissions. By default, you will be the only person to have access to the movie, so it is important to set the permissions for each movie you upload.

Click the “Change permissions for this file” button. Under the pull‐down menu you are given several choices for access to your movie.

For this example we will use “Selected Courses & User IDs”. If you are currently teaching a course, it will be listed under Courses on the left.

Choose which course(s) you would like to have access to the movie, then click the Add Course(s) button next to the list. This will place the course in the Pending Permissions column on the right. You can also add individual User IDs by typing them into the field under Additional User IDs and clicking the Add User IDs button next to it. Once all the permissions are in the column on the right, click the Apply Permissions button at the bottom to set the permissions. Note that you can also use the Pending Permissions column on the right to remove permissions by selecting the course or User ID on the right and clicking the Remove Selected Permissions button below it. Also note that no changes will take place until the Apply Permissions button at the bottom of the page is clicked! After setting your permissions, click the Return to Manage Movies button. Here you can view all the movies you have already uploaded. You can set the same permissions for many movies at once by clicking the checkbox to the right of each movie, then selecting Change Permissions from the pull‐down menu at the bottom and clicking the Submit button.

You will notice that you can also edit the movies’ titles and descriptions and also delete movies as well. Clicking the red arrow next to the movie will reveal more information about the movie, including the permissions that are set for that movie, the date it was uploaded, how many different users have accessed it, and the movie’s description. An HTML link is provided so you can easily copy and paste it into a Web page.