[mattmarshall]

hey all

for some reason, my Safari just downloads .ram files when I click on them. On my roomate's computer, it launches Real and streams them.

I have to go to my desktop, click on the link, then delete it later. Annoying.

Anyone know how to fix this?

- matt

[Randman]

Change your settings in Real Player.

[mattmarshall]

it seems to be a safari thing. in firefo, everything works right.

i did try the setting sin real, though. no dice

thanks

- matt

[Amorya]

Make sure .ram is assigned to real player by default. On my machine it was assigned to GraphicConverter and that stopped the autolaunch thing, and changing it (through the Get Info window in the finder) fixed it. This is for OmniWeb though.

Amorya

[mattmarshall]

I got it working. I had turned off the "open safe files" option.

thanks for all your help.

- matt

[Millennium]

One thing that's important to note: .ram files are always downloaded, not streamed.

A .ram file is what's called a metafile. Your browser downloads this and passes it off to RealPlayer. RealPlayer then reads the file, which contains the location of the actual media. It uses that location to start streaming the file. This is the same concept that BitTorrent uses with its .torrent files.

Why does your friend's machine seem to stream the file directly, then? It has to do with how helper apps like RealPlayer work: the file is downloaded to a temporary folder (often the browser's own cache), and then the helper app is told to open it there. When you told Safari not to open "safe" files (which was a wise move, and you should probably do it again), you prevented the opening step from occurring, so it offered to save the file somewhere else on your disk instead. If you had opened up the .ram file in RealPlayer, it would have started to stream the media, just as if you'd clicked it in a browser.