Embedding Movies in HTML

I've found the code to embed a .WMV, in HTML, which I suppose could apply for .ram, or .mov, which I'm not even 100% sure about.

I was just hoping someone could go over the code and explain what options you have available when doing this. Or at least point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Whats the code you have?

<object id='mediaPlayer' width="320" height="266"
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="test.wmv">
<param name='animationatStart' value='true'>
<param name='transparentatStart' value='true'>
<param name='autoStart' value="true">
<param name='showControls' value="false">
<param name="ShowStatusBar" value="true">
<param name='loop' value="0">
<embed type='application/x-mplayer2'
pluginspage='http://microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/download/'
src="test.wmv"
width="320"
height="266"
autostart="1"
displaysize='4'
autosize='0'
bgcolor='darkblue'
showcontrols="0"
showtracker='0'
showstatusbar='1'
showdisplay='0'
videoborder3d='0'
designtimesp='5311'
loop="0"
>
</embed>
</object>

Only reason I didn't want to show the code was that if someone knew how to do it from scratch, and explain it well, they wouldn't be influenced by whatever code i had here.

Couple of things that are odd to me, is that it seems when u give something an id tag, like <object id="whatever" that it's referenced somewhere else. My only experience with naming things, i.e. giving them id's, is using CSS to give a style to a certain area that you've named.

Anyway, feast upon this.

Hmm, looks ok to me. You'll probably want to get an answer from some of the other web designers here, as I don't get too heavy into the media.

Oh I have no doubt the code is correct, but I just wish I had a better explanation than a self-explanation on my part on what does what. Excluding the obvious attributes, I'd just like to know what everything does, and if there are any other attribs I should know about.

Which attributes are you having a hard time with?

<param name='animationatStart' value='true'>

For example, given that, does that mean if i set it to false, it will only play if someone hits play>

<param name='transparentatStart' value='true'>

No idea what this is..

<param name='autoStart' value="true">
this one looks like what I assumed the first one was. I assumed the first means it plays the movie, but that's obviously not it.

autostart="1"

If you tell it to auto start, in the parameter name above, what value is this auto start doing?

displaysize='4'
Are there pre set displays? And why would you use this and specify a resolution for the movie below?

showtracker='0'

What's this?

designtimesp='5311'

And what's this?

im pretty sure of a few things but i could be wrong i havent embedded movies in a while

autostart="1" im pretty sure means it will start it after 1 second. thats just a delay thing
showtracker="0" is the seek bar. i think the higher the number the bigger the seeker is

animationatstart i think is for like the windows media symbol to spin around at start or the quicktime loading thingy

Go to this page and you'll see to the left frame.. there is a whole bunch of variables and their values with definitions:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/wmp6sdk/htm/player6animationatstart.asp

When ever I find code that i don't know how it works in anything, HTML, perl, C++, applescript, etc... I just take out parts of the code and see how it changes things trial and error.