Embedding Video w/Flash on Web Site

Report · Aug 28, 2010

Hope this is the right forum. I waslooking at a book on Amazon & there appeared to be a Flash player embedded with the video about the book in case someone might want to watch it. It sat there with what appeared to be the first frame of the video waiting for the user to click the play > button on it.

So, what was going on there? Is it possible to have a video embedded in a web site? Flash player is a browser add-on so it's there, and within HTML the video, or swf file, is downloaded & played. But is there some way via HTML or some such to embed the video onto the web site?

You see, I'm looking for a way to eliminate the need for some place on the web to save my video. My web site is a hosted site & I can't keep it there.

Report · Aug 29, 2010

Embedded video is all over the place (example: YouTube - 1.7 billion videos and counting)

Can you use Flash Player to take a video from one site and store it on another? In a word... NO.

There are several flash video downloaders that will allow you to save Flash video to your hard drive (Google: DownloadHelper for one), but if you were to take a video from Amazon and upload it to another site:

1. At the very least it would get pulled by that site for either a viewer report or Amazon might report it (they have teams of people who spend all day and night looking for that kind of stuff). or

2. At the very worst, if they can get enough informtion from wherever you upload it, you might get a letter from a law firm in New York and some nasty threats of litigation.

If it;s your OWN video, again you can't use Flash Player to publish or move it, It's only a player.

Flash Professional will allow you to make an FLA, F4V or SWF from your raw video, but if your host won't llow you to put it on your site with them, you can upload it to the aforementioned YouTube or any of a bunch of other video hosting sites.

You really should look into another host too. You're getting a raw deal if they're charging you for bandwidth, and then telling you what you can do with it. That's like paying your taxes and being told you can only drive certain roads, even though they used your money to build or repair all of them.

Report · Aug 29, 2010

The video is mine. I made a PPT slide show and I have an ap that converts that to a SWF. So, now I need a place to put the file so I can put the HTML on my high school class site to play it when someone looks at the site.

There are hosting sites for putting photos and videos and music, but they have severe restrictions. Typically, like Photobucket.com, there's a size and time length restrictions on videos, and if I build a similar PPT file to honor the deceased of my class, I will exceed the length limit a great deal. Every place I look has some silly size/length limits that aren't practical. Like one that has a video length limit of 90 seconds.

I'm guessing I'll have to find some way to afford having a full blown web site JUST to keep a couple of videos on. Thanks for your thoughts.

Report · Aug 29, 2010

That app would be Captivate? Not really important, but why can't you upload it to the class site? Even if they don't have the uploader, you should be able to get ahold of the site admin and have them post it. As an SWF from Captivate, it's a lot smaller than the full blown PPT, and Captivate will even write the embed code when you export it.

I helped my daughter do three PPT to SWF/HTML slideshows fo her 6th grade Social Studies class last year. The teacher was very impressed, and the rest of the kids were... well, captivated by the presentation.

As far a a full blown website goes, they aren't that expensive anymore. Hosting starts as low as $1.98 a month, and all you have to have is a good text editor to write the code or a good WYSIWYG designer like Dreamweaver, and you can be up and running in less than an hour in most cases.

Report · Aug 30, 2010

The app I have is PPT2Flash Pro, from a company on the other side of the world, Wondershare. I first purchased their Std version and it would not play audio or loop the presentation properly. After weeks of dealing with them, I finally found out that my older version of PPT, 2002, probably had a little to do with the problem. They offered me an upgrade to their Pro version, though I really don't know the diff. I contemplated for a while and once I made the decision that if I couldn't find PPT 2003 or 2007 (or maybe even 2010), I'd purchase it, then I took them up on their upgrade offer.

It's a pretty slick app, attached to the PPT app and converts to SWF or EXE in good time. Creates a SWF file "and" an html file for embedding in a web site, just change the swf file path to where ever you put it. Then the PPT slide presentation is a video that can be resized for your web site. Pretty cool, BUT........

I'm going to check with my class site host to see if there's a place there to store these kind of files. My current domain host (I have a "short" domain name to get to my class site) states that I need to upgrade to a server to do SWF files, and I'm trying to get through to their English speaking personnel to get all that clarified.

For this kind of scenario, I wish HTML had some way in which something like my SWF file could just be put "in line" (as it were) and not have to store the file somewhere else. See, this file is not for use ANYWHERE but my class site. I.E. other web designers have no need nor right to this file.

Report · Aug 30, 2010

Wondershare makes some pretty good stuff. I first learned about them through giveawayoftheday.com (a great site for freebies).

Unfortunately, HTML 4 cannot do what you're looking for. While you can embed the SWF, it still has to call on a remote file. HTML 5 is going to change that from what I'm reading, but it isn't happening right this minute.