Help with .wav file -

Brooke's picture

She has: 681 posts

Joined: Feb 1999

Hello everyone. I have been watching the forums for awhile now and thought I would come to you first for help.

I design basic websites and this is the first time that I have had to deal with audio. My client created a .wav file that he would like to start playing as soon as the home page loads. I am having two problems:

1. It is taking forever to load - how can I cut the file size down?
2. It only plays on IE not Netscape - does anyone know why?

Thanks in advance for looking into this for me. The URL is: http://www.martinappraisals.com

Brooke

Brooke's picture

She has: 681 posts

Joined: Feb 1999

Thank you for the info! As soon as I try it I will let you know how it works.

I don't like embedded sound either - but the client is always right. (right?)

Thanks again!

Brooke

They have: 2,390 posts

Joined: Nov 1998

From personal experience, I always advice the client. In this case, it would seem your client has the 'what's bandwidth?' idea of the internet. I would thry and explain that many visitors will get annoyed waiting for the sound to download.
JP

They have: 99 posts

Joined: Dec 1998

Just thought I'd through my 2 cents worth in on this subject.

I don't think that many people surf with their Audio/speakers on. I don't!

Having .wav files on your website will also eat up tons of bandwidth...as JP. said earlier. I also would consider it pretty tacky unless it was part of a movie on the site.

I would advise your client to forget the sound. Nobody probably will hear it anyway...and people will get upset waiting for sounds to load.

Thats all I got to say.

------------------
Kyle O
Website Lunatic: "The most stuff for your website"
www.biginfo.net

They have: 2,390 posts

Joined: Nov 1998

Hi Brooke,
Nice to see you getting involved.
I will first state that one of my pet hates is embeded sounds. They annoy the hell out of me because they always appear from nowhere when you are already engrossed in the content of said page.

Anyway, here is some help on getting the sound cross browser:
- Embeded sounds really only play on Netscape so your reversed problem strikes me as unusual initially.

The correct format to be used is...

<EMBED SRC="sound.wav" AUTOSTART=FALSE (change to TRUE for imdediate start of sound) TRUE LOOP=FALSE WIDTH=150 HEIGHT=50 ALIGN="CENTER">
</EMBED>

To make the file size smaller use another format such as .AU or .MID.

Was that any help?
JP

------------------
The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site
www.what-next.com
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website

[This message has been edited by JP Stones (edited March 16, 1999).]

Brooke's picture

She has: 681 posts

Joined: Feb 1999

Thanks for you input - but to tell you the truth - I told him all of that. And he still wants it!

I am going to try to see if he will save it in a different format so that it isn't quite as large - but we will see.

Thanks again!

Brooke

Brooke's picture

She has: 681 posts

Joined: Feb 1999

Okay - so I used the code you gave me, but...frontpage keeps altering it! (I hate fp for that) So I went into notepad to add it there - which works - but I have to ftp this particular site by publishing through fp. Once I bring the page in fp it changes the code - got any ideas?

Brooke

They have: 2,390 posts

Joined: Nov 1998

I`m afraid not, I never use FrontPage.
JP

They have: 36 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

HI Brooke, I don't know if I can be of any help here, but I want to say just a couple of things to you on this.
Embedded audio: I have seen one or two sites only that have had this feature that I actually liked. That was because the sound loaded rather quickly, and it "eased" into the tune, and the tune was very easy on the ears. Most are too tacky and annoying though. Secondly, I have seen some sites that have a feature where the visitor can click to listen to the audio. This gives visitors a choice to listen or not. "sound good"?? heh heh. Also, I have never used FP, but I have used Netscape Composer lots, and have entered HTML into pages in Notepad, then opened the page in Composer, and it is fine. You may want to try using Composer. Once you get familiar with what you can and can't do with it, it is a pretty good basic web creation tool. Best of luck!!

They have: 15 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

In Front Page (front page express at least) you need to goto the menu "Insert" -> "HTML Markup..." then a dialog box will appear. Just enter the code you don't want front page to touch and click "OK."

Thats one of the drawbacks for using Front Page. Or almost any microsoft product at all.

------------------
Thank You,
-nick mancini
-icq: 35175980
-aol/aim: avbzero
-http://www.extreme-vb.net/access

They have: 359 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

Hey Brooke,

Not sure why anybody would want to use wave files. The files are huge. If your client really wants music with voice, you might check into Real Audio. The files are about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a wave file and I believe that Real Player (which comes with NS and IE) streams the audio. Meaning it starts playing just as soon as the file starts loading. The alternative is MIDI files which are music only.

To answer the question about hearing in IE and not NS. I believe IE uses the bgsound tag which NS does not recognise, where NS uses the embed tag which if memory serves me, IE will recognize. It was part of the NS vs. MS wars back about version 2 or 3 of their browsers. Hope this helps!
------------------
Dan

[This message has been edited by cds (edited April 13, 1999).]

Dan
Recycle Video Games Network

Stupidity killed the cat, curiosity was framed!

They have: 2,390 posts

Joined: Nov 1998

Welcome to the Webmaster Forums Dan, nice to have you here.

Good point regarding the RA files being much smaller the problem here is that RA requires the player which not everyone has on their system. This is negative point that put many poeple off RA.
JP

------------------
The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site
www.what-next.com
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website

Brooke's picture

She has: 681 posts

Joined: Feb 1999

Thanks to all of you for your help. With the combination of the code that you gave me along with the fp help - I got it working on both browsers!

If you want to check it out - the site is at: http://www.martinappraisals.com

I need to work on him getting a different file format because it takes sooooooo long to download.(btw - it's really quiet so you have to turn up your speakers to hear it!)

Thanks again! I love being on this forum!

Brooke

They have: 2,390 posts

Joined: Nov 1998

Brooke, takes a long time to download, I would def change it so say - .au
JP

------------------
The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site
www.what-next.com
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website

They have: 9 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

Brooke, I must say that takes A LOOOOONNNNNNG time to download.

I'm speaking from experience. My PC in my office is connected to a dual T3, (equal to 56 T1's) and it still took a very long time to load. Even if you don't change the format, you can always change the sample rate. If it's installed on your computer, and you're using Win95/98 go to the accessories menu and use "Sound Recorder" in the file menu you'll see, (I think) properties or something and that'll allow you to change it from 44hz. down to a lower sampling rate that can cut the size in half or even smaller.

Just a thought.

-Rick-

------------------
http://www.MoreMail.com - Free Web-Based email. Check out our Contest page!

They have: 5,633 posts

Joined: Jan 1970

I have been using the Beatnik player for embedded sounds. The file can be converted to an .au file with converter. It starts playing very quickly. The code will check to see if the player is installed and on newer browsers will let you install the player with out shutting down the browser. It works for both Netscape and IE and they have tools to embed the sounds without pulling your hair out. Check them out at www.beatnik.com .
If you have to use sounds it is a great way to go imho.

Want to join the discussion? Create an account or log in if you already have one. Joining is fast, free and painless! We’ll even whisk you back here when you’ve finished.