Putting Video on the Web - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression

Image Processing Reference

In-Depth Information

<smil>

<head>

</head>

<body>

<video src=”http://www.contactright.com/visual.rm”/>..

</body>

</smil>

Linking to a movie with an <A> tag bypasses the MIME-type matching and the

browser cannot properly invoke a plug-in. Some browsers cope with this more elegantly

than others, but it is never ideal. Even if the browser does intercept this loading mecha-

nism and create a virtual page with a plug-in, there is no way to control that plug-in view-

ing experience. Appendix I summarizes some useful MIME-type values. Note that some

of these must be defined in your web server configuration files.

If the file extension is not mapped, the file contents may be presented as text in the

browser window. A movie presented like this is not going to impress a consumer!

Some file types, such as .mp4 , .smil , .swf , and the rtsp:// protocol, will not

properly invoke QuickTime or other handlers; if you don't have a plug-in that maps to the

kind of data being downloaded, the whole thing might even crash.

The <EMBED> tag works with all browsers across different platforms. One of the

attributes is the MIME type of the content. The browser uses this to select a playback appli-

cation or plug-in. The <EMBED> tag also has failover mechanisms that lead you to a down-

load page if there is some content being embedded for which you don't have a plug-in

installed. Table 26-3 lists the download addresses if you want to include them in your web

pages.

Table 26-3 Download Pages for Popular Player Plug-Ins

Player

Download URL

QuickTime

02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B

Real

CFCDAA03-8BE4-11CF-B84B-0020AFBBCCFA

Window Media 9

6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6

Window Media (legacy)

22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95

Macromedia Flash

D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000

Search WWH ::

Custom Search

Home