Embedded .WMV Video

[GhostX9]

I am have embedded some .WMV videos on my web site. The videos seem to play fine when I am on my company Intranet, but when I access them from a machine using DSL it gets very choppy and even stops at certain points. I don't have a separate media server to stream the files from.

Does anyone know of any way for me to "stream" the video or have it buffer without using a separate media server?

Is there a way I can code my page to help optimize?

Even if I need to have the user download the entire file to their machine before it starts playing I need to find a way to make it clean and uninterupted.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[h4r01d]

asf is a great way of streaming to users... it allows folks to begin view as the file is loaded...

or you could just do it the free and open-source way, quicktime (Darwin for win32), but you gonna need to be runnin perl for that (good times).

mac osx user get it as part of their OS.... lucky dawgs


now, with all that said... if i am not misshapen... i believe winmedia allows certain active x controls to help to pre-trigger the 'play' sequence whilst its a-loadin. however... I think you are gonna need to be streamin asf for that... (maybe though, now that i think about the acronym... asf... that needs a media server?).

lately my obsession is streaming content, so I am gonna read a book and repost in a few minutes here if i find sumptin for ya.

[h4r01d]

ok, i read some.... well, enuff

add the 'autoStart' parameter to your code... and mark it as 'true' (Specifies whether the clip should begin playback automatically; default is true.)

[h4r01d]

When you click on a Web page link that opens a stand-alone player, the browser actually hands off the metafile to the player. After that, the browser has nothing to do with the process. Embedded players work slightly differently. They have all the functionality of stand-alone players but are controlled, to some extent, by the browser.

Browsers communicate with embedded players in one of two ways — either by using the Netscape plug-in architecture or by using the Microsoft ActiveX control. Unsurprisingly, Netscape Navigator provides no support for ActiveX, and Internet Explorer no longer supports the Netscape plug-in.

The RealSystem and QuickTime provide support for both embedding technologies, while Windows Media only supports the Active X control.

My suggestion: use quicktime, as realmedia exploits its workforce and it a plague on humanity, IMHO.

[GhostX9]

First off, thanks for all of your feedback.

Well a big part of my problem is that my admin deleted my source files .. DOH

So I am basically stuck with these .WMV files and have to make the best of it.

Do you know of a way to force it to download the entire movie to their machine before it starts playing?

[Robert Wellock]

Not a good idea to force a download before playing but the autostart would be to set to false.