Publish to web video as in VC = how to?

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/7/2004, 6:31 AM

The auto embed has nothing to do with the encode to WM. That's a separate issue. Below is sample code for one way of how to do this....
As far as the encode containing HTML markers, put your cursor where you want to call up the html pages, press "C" for Command. Now in the dialog window, type in the URL that you want to bring up. You'll have to write your html so that the media player stays in that window, but the html page in the frame next to it is triggered/targeted by the command in the video stream.
When you embed the html commands in Vegas, select the command format of URL. Then in the parameter, type in the URL of what page you want to be displayed. Comment is for your own information that will be displayed in the Vegas timeline.
Here is a piece of sample code for autoembedding to a page. You can specify whether it autostarts or not, and more. Not too hard to figure out, I did, and I'm an html idiot.

<p align="center"><OBJECT ID="WMPlayer1" WIDTH=280 HEIGHT=240 classid="CLSID:22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95" CODEBASE="http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab#Version=5,1,52,701" standby="Loading Microsoft Windows Media Player components..." type="application/x-oleobject">
<PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="http://insert the http location of your file here">
<PARAM NAME="ShowControls" VALUE="1">
<PARAM NAME="ShowStatusBar" VALUE="1">
<PARAM NAME="ShowDisplay" VALUE="1">
<PARAM NAME="AutoStart" VALUE="0">
<PARAM NAME="TransparentStart" VALUE="1">
<PARAM NAME="AutoSize" VALUE="1">
<Embed type="application/x-mplayer2" pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/download/default.asp" src="http://insert the http location of your file here" Name=WMPlayer1 ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="1" ShowDisplay="1" AutoStart="0" TransparentStart="1" AutoSize="1" DefaultFrame="Slide" width=280 height=240>
</embed>
</OBJECT>


Hope this helps.

beatnik wrote on 5/7/2004, 7:10 AM

Hello Spot, the code you supplied, is this for a WMP Plugin style OR a
WMP Active X style?

Thanks,

Alex Morias
www.VideoListings.ca

beatnik wrote on 5/7/2004, 7:34 AM

Just found it Spot..it's "active x" I am REALLY thinking of going the route of
FLASH video for the web. I just purchased a program called FLIX PRO
from Wildform. It easily converts an .AVI video file to .SWF. They say that
flash will play on ALL Hardware/Operating Systems/Browsers! This
way I don't have to render to Windows Media Player AND Quicktime! Just
one video for ALL! I am still in the process of tweeking with the program
to get a video as good as Windows Media Player. I have it close but NOT
there yet.

Regards,

Alex Morias
www.VideoListings.ca

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/7/2004, 7:59 AM

Flix is decent, but it can't approach the quality of WMV, and probably won't for a long time. Until the pipes are really fat everywhere, we're staying with wmv. windows 9 now can be read on a mac, so it's not that big a deal. With everything eventually going to Windows Media, IMO, I'm not interested in going anywhere further. Clients occasionally do, and then we do deliver in QT or even REAL.
Flash will continue to grow for certain uses, but I don't know that I like any of the vid I've seen at a reasonable size. Saw MacroMedia's full demo at NAB, and nothing under 250kpbs looked worth a damn to me. That makes it useless for most real world purposes, IMO.

ken c wrote on 5/7/2004, 9:39 AM

hey thanks Douglas, much appreciated .. I want to start using Vegas w/Ultra for monthly online video newsletters like this .... the code snippet will come in handy (I use dreamweaver) ...

again, your dvds are what got me up to speed on vegas so quickly... wouldve taken weeks of frustration without 'em for me to learn it...

now less than a week after watching them, I can do
www.kencalhoun.com/dtupromomay5.wmv

etc, and that's just the very start.. thanks again!

ken

beatnik wrote on 5/7/2004, 9:55 AM

Thanks Spot, I am going to get a refund on the program (15 day refund policy)

One QUICK question...I understand you have two ways of placing a WMP
video on a web site (1). Active X and (2) Plugin

My understanding is that (1) Active X cannot has problems with some browsers and the Mac environments and (2) Plugin can play on all?

I like the (1) active X method because it shows "buffering %" and I noticed that (2) plugin does not? Am I doing something wrong? I would like
to use (2) plugin method AND have the "buffering %" at the bottom of the player.

Thanks Spot!

Cheesehole wrote on 5/7/2004, 10:08 AM

beatnik, the code Spot posted has both. See the object tag? That's activeX. but see the embed tag within the object tag? That's for all the browsers that don't do ActiveX objects. They will just use the embed tag. That's why you have your media file name in two places.

btw - flash is great for certain kinds of video, but not all kinds. Depends on the purpose. And it definitely works on a heck of a lot more platforms than WM9 does.

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/7/2004, 10:44 AM

I don't know that I'd return Flix, like I say, it's a good app. I'm just not happy with the quality of Flash for video at this point. WMV is the best low-bandwidth opportunity right now. Can't ever hurt to know more though, can it? :-)

danstine wrote on 5/7/2004, 12:04 PM

I am a programmer, so I'll jump in here briefly.

<object> is an HTML tag, it is not an active-x object. It just so happens that Microsoft, in it's pave their own path mode, chose to implement their player object as an active-x object. If you want to read more accurately about <object> and <embed> tags, visit w3c.org. This is a good starting point: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html

The trouble with just using the <embed> tag, is that it is deprecated, but you can't use just the <object> tag with windows media player, because it's an activex object. If you want to truly provide cross-browser and cross-platform support, you have to use both.

The way that you use both is by starting with the <object> tag, then using the <embed> tag as a child-element of <object>. Most well behaved browsers, and certainly all that we have tested on, if they do not support the <object> tag, or the classid, will fail, then attempt to render the child element, in this case the <embed> tag. Astute students of HTML, will note that theoritically, you should be able to do some very interesting things with nested child elements as a way of gracefully handling failures of any of the parent-elements. I'm still working on that, but have run into some problems with how Netscape 7.0 handles nested child-elements.

Be very careful with your embedding in webpages, and make sure that you test on multiple browers, what is easily forgiven in Internet Explorer, barfs badly in Netscape, Firefox, and Safari. Also, make sure that you fully understand the meaning of all of the attributes and params; don't just blindly copy something from somebodies website, because you don't know if they understood what they were doing. For example, there are two different versions of the MS WMP ActiveX object, make sure that you are using the correct one for your needs. Also, make sure that you use the correct version number on the codebase attribute for the needs of your video.

As for HREF's in WMV files or ASX files, I read a note from Microsoft recently that this support is being deprecated due to security issues, and that patches to WMP 9 will add a registry entry that defaults to HREF not allowed. I know that for my business, that knocked me out of the running for using HREF's in WMV or ASX files, because I can't ask my customers to go change their registry entries.

QuickTime actually has some interesting support for HREFs, and I think that's what I see in use in the main menu on Spot's Sundance site.

I still much prefer the quality of WMV over QT .mov, but ... About 20% of the people hitting our site elect to play a .mov rather than a WMV, and my Apple buddies get quite adament about wanting support for QT, and not being required to installed WMP.

Dianne