QuoteFAQ
1. What is Coolstreaming?
CoolStreaming is a application layer streaming media transportation software. It lets viewers exchange buffer with each other. If you have experience with BitTorrent, you'll easily understand the advantage in dong this.
2. How to use it?
download the CoolStreaming, install coolstreaming, wait for a couple of minutes for channel list to appear. double click a channel to select that channel, wait for coolstreaming to buffer data. Wait for another couple of minutes. Media player or Realplayer will automaticly popup and play the channel.
3. Why it's not working?
If you can not display channel list, check if there is firewall in use.(If your firewall only allow common port, CoolStreaming need to connect to non-common port.) If there is message say your time is wrong, check your time and timezone setup.
If have to use proxy for all your network operation, you might not be able use CoolStreaming now. No proxy support for now.
If there is message for popup player but no player was poped up, you can manually start Windows Media Player or Real Player. Open the link in the message box. (http://localhost...) If correctly setup windows media player but no player popup, check if there is a media player process running, kill wmplayer.exe, click play button on CoolStreaming again.
If windows media player poped up but say link error, check if IE had proxy setup, disable proxy on IE.
If windows media player poped up but say link error, check if you can reach localhost, if not, you can try http://127.0.0.1...
If correctly poped up windows media player/Rea Player, but can not play the program, please check if your player is the latest version. We need Windoes Media Player 9.0 and Real Player 10.0(Both software are freely
available.)
4. Why program quality is bad?
There are several reasons
(1) In the begining, usually CoolStreaming is looking for better source stream suppliers, wait for 5-10 Minutes, it would be better.
(2) If the quality is still not good after 10 minutes, please check status say "buffering xx%", it this number is low, that indicats your network condition is bad. Your network connection can not afford this high rate program, but you can still choose low bit rate program(e.g. radio).
(3) If it says "buffering > 80%" and the quality is still bad, it could be the source is bad.
(4) Quality column shows the average quality of all users. For example if the Quality is 95%, it means average can get 95% data. So you can determin quality from this number.(If the source quality is bad, users won't get a high quality number.)
5. Can I add more channels?
If you want to add channel, you need to install CoolStreaming Server.
But not all users have the ablity to install channel server. If you have good network connection(For
example, you are the network admin or you are providing streaming media service), then you propably can install CoolStreaming Server. See, http://www.coolstreaming.org/server.txt for more details about Server installation.
6. Why some channels could disapear?
Usually, the reason is coolStreaming Server is down or the source of the Channel had problem. The servers are not dedicated to CoolStreaming, and the streaming source could be contaminated. If you can provide stable source or server, please contact me. Your help would be highly appreciated by all the viewers.
7. How to watch CoolStreaming in a strict controled Intranet?
If there is strict firewall to restrict network ports, it is difficult for CoolStreaming to work. No good
solution yet. Hope to solve this problem in the near future.
8. How to help CoolStreaming?
You can (1) Provide stable streaming source, setup CoolStreaming Server.
(2) provide information about available stable link of streaming
source(better with relativly
low bitrate, more use can view it)
(3) tell more people about CoolStreaming
9. Will CoolStreaming hurt harddisk?
No. Some BitTorrent software will read and write harddisk frequently, some user worried that
CollStreaming have this problem. Actually CoolStreaming use main memory to buffer and exchange data with very few harddisk operation. Some user find reduced free harddisk space is because some media player(Real Player, etc.) will store temperary files on harddisk. Those temp file will be cleaned when the player closes.
10. Why there is delay on CoolStreaming?
There is about 1 minute local buffer. The total delay would be about 2 minutes. If you have a >5 minutes delay, you can restart media player/real player.
11. Which port is used by CoolStreaming? How to set firewall?
CoolStreaming use port larger than 1024. So the best way is to open all the ports >1024. Users inside a firewall may exerience worse quality than those who outside of firewall. Please set firewall to allow
connection to larger than 1024 ports.
12. I still have question, how to ask,
send email to cool@coolstreaming.org
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