Help Page

The audio/video segments of the SJA website will someday not require a help section. As user sophistication increases and internet infrastructure improves, clicking and viewing an audio/video clip of the Sunday homily will be as easy and commonplace as turning on a television or radio is to you today. Until that day, here a few thoughts:

• What is streaming audio/video? Audio and/or video segments are very large files to download onto your computer. Since the speed of file transfer is limited on the internet(especially if you have a dialup modem), it would take a long time to "download" an audio/video file onto your computer. Several companies, most notably www.real.com and www.macromedia.com, have come up with a relatively new technique called "streaming". In this technique, a streaming webserver divides the file up into sequential segments. This segments are sent in order to your computer. The webserver calculates the speed of your connection and sends enough sequential segments of the total file to allow a safe "buffer" in case the connection slows down. As you open one of our Mass highlights you will see the word "buffering" flash across the bottom of the window. When a safe buffer of segments have been sent the player starts the video/audio on your screen. The remaining segments download as you are watching the first segments. If your connection is consistent, the video should play without pausing as later segments load in queue. If your connection stalls, you may see the words "rebuffering" appear at the bottom of your window. Rebuffering makes for a poor viewing experience as the words and picture become choppy. If rebuffering occurs often in your situation and video/audio is important to you consider a faster internet connection or downloading the whole file and playing at a later time.
• To Stream or Not to Stream? So should you stream the Mass highlights or download them to your computer and open them at a later time in your iTunes or iPod? It depends. Streaming is faster, but if your connection is slow or inconsistent, the quality suffers. Downloading is slower, but you end up with a file that you can replay over and over or delete it after your first play. And if you want to listen on your iPod, downloading is the only option. Whether you download or stream probably depends a lot on your internet connection. If you are using a dialup modem, you may find your best results downloading all the files for a given Sunday while you are doing something else and coming back and playing them later. If you have a broadband connection(cable, DSL, or T1) typically found in office settings it is very easy to stream the individual files. And of course, the real benchmark is to test both yourself!!
• Download Macromedia Flash Player stjoan.com offers streaming media in the popular Flash Player format.To view a streamed file you will need Macromedia Flash Player in its most current version. To download the latest version of Flash Player, go to macromedia.com.
• Viewing Streaming Mass Files Once Flash Player is loaded on to your computer, playing the Mass streaming files is easy. Just click on the appropriate links on a given Sundays highlight list and Flash Player will play the highlight for you. You need do nothing. It all happens behind the scenes.
• Downloading Mass Highlights to your computer: Podcasting In order to download mass highlights, you will need to install iTunes on your computer. This will allow you to download the highlights and play them on your computer in iTunes or transfer them to your iPod. You can click this link and it will open your iTunes player and take you to our podcasting site. Once there, you can save it as one of your subscription podcasting sites and each time you open up iTunes we will be there. Alternatively, you can open up your iTunes player and manually type in www.stjoan.com/highlights/sjapodcast2.xml. If you do not have iTunes installed yet, this same link will allow you to download the free iTunes player.