What is the Best streaming audio format for Mac

[rhs]

Hi friends,

On one of my sites long back I had embedded an audio file in the .wma format for streaming it.The duration is 2:45 and I was sucessful in reducing the file size to 450k. But wma doesnot work on the Mac platform.

1.What would be the best streaming audio that will work for Mac.
2. Is there a .wma plug-in for Mac users? (atleast I couldnot find it on microsofts' site)
3. Is there a way to create streaming QT audio?

any help would be highly appreciated.

Regards

RHS

[jetpilot8]

You can get a windows media player for the Mac (OSX) at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1e974157-5031-4ac6-840a-6e07547b6aeb&DisplayLang=en

I have not heard much about it good or bad though....sorry! :o

As far as steaming for QT........It can be done, as well as be synced with a seperate animation file etc. as well....I have personally never done it but it can be done, I was just thinking you needed to have it set up through a quicktime server etc.........

Hope I have helped a little and not confused the topic more....:thumbsup:

[brothercake]

There's also Real Audio, which streams well at low bandwidth and is available for Mac.

[rhs]

Thanks for your inputs jetpilot8 and brothercake,

I did download the WMediaplayer 9 for Mac (it was introduced after my earlier post) - the player seems to be Ok but the web browser plug-in is no good. It even reveals a hidden plug-in and worst of all still doesn't play it.

Brothercake,

I will try Real and let you know. what I actually was looking for is a plug-in for playing .wma files (which already exist on the site) for Mac users so that I need not upload additional files, WMplayer 9 doesn't do a good job.

I donot have QTpro, any workaround to compress the Original mp3 file to a QT streaming file without the use of a QTserver? I wish to compress it from 1.2Mb to say 450-500k so that it plays even on a dial-up 28.8kbps connection.

any further input will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

RHS