andy206uk — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 19:16:23 +0000

I just remembered something I came across very recently that will be perfect for your needs. It's called Wimpy Player Button and it's available from:

http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_button.html

It's completely configured via HTML alone and what's more... ITS FREE! (to try - $19.99 to buy)

Megan — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 14:21:06 +0000

We use flash for audio lectures at work. The one problem is that there is no play functions - you have to create your own (which we did). But other than that it works well. We used to have a lot of technical complications with real that we don't have with flash. We also distribute on CD-ROM so bandwidth isn't a problem.

andy206uk — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 01:23:01 +0000

Flash is streamed into the browser, I believe that includes the audio as well (I'm not 100% though). You can create a preloader so that it loads the first part of the audio while you have a progress bar and the rest can stream behind the scenes while that is playing.

Either way, with a 45 minute audio file this is going to cost a fortune in bandwidth.

Renegade — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 01:17:27 +0000

I don't think Flash will stream audio by default, but, I think your able to set it.

Another option would be to cut the audio up in chunks within the file. But, once again, you'll have to set it so that it will play one chunk, while it downloads the other.

egalvez — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 00:29:35 +0000

Thank you for the reply. Another related question if I may, please: Will audio-only Flash have to pre-load entirely first, or will it stream? If it won't stream, then Windows Media or RealAudio is superior, is it not? I'm assuming that even using DSL/Cable, an 45-minute audio-only .swf file that's a whole lot of megs would take a long time to pre-load.

andy206uk — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:53:44 +0000

Well... as with anything to get the file size down you have to loose the quality. Flash has simple options for changing the sound quality and you can get some pretty small file sizes.

He's definitely right about one thing though... Flash is probably one of the most widely available plug ins and has a much higher percentage than pretty much anything else.