Embed Microsoft Windows Media Player into your webpage

I receive a lot of questions from customers who want their On-demand videos to be easily accessible for a wide range of clients, family etc. on the Web. As most streaming multimedia files are in one of the three major formats — Microsoft Windows Media, Apple’s QuickTime, or RealAudio/Video – it can be difficult to decide how best to display the video on your website.

An ideal solution to this issue is to encode or convert your video files into WMV format and embed the Microsoft Windows Media Player right into the Web page, as the vast majority of PCs have Windows Media Player on them, and people are familiar with it. A lot of people tell me they hear the words “embed into the web page” and think this involves some major work – truth is, it’s a very simple thing to do!

Embedding a Windows Media video file is done by inserting code in the web page's HTML. Our shared streaming server space allows you to upload video and audio files via FTP, and then by using the Control Panel in the File Manager system, it will generate the HTML code for you. Just sign up for one of our On-Demand WMStream packages and follow these simple steps:

• Step one – Encode your Video file into WMV format.
• Step two – Upload the file to our shared streaming server.
• Step three – Use the control panel to generate the HTML code for you
• Step four- Embed the HTML code into your webpage.
• Step five – Sit back and enjoy your video!

See? I told you it was easy! The HTML code will look something like this:

<OBJECT ID="MediaPlayer" WIDTH="384" HEIGHT="380" CLASSID="CLSID:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95"

STANDBY="Loading Windows Media Player components..." TYPE="application/x-oleobject">

<PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="http://links2.planetstream.net/dave/SHFullVideo384x2882spkf.asx">

<PARAM name="autostart" VALUE="false">         

<PARAM name="ShowControls" VALUE="true">

<param name="ShowStatusBar" value="true">

<PARAM name="ShowDisplay" VALUE="true">

<EMBED TYPE="application/x-mplayer2" SRC="videofilename.wmv" NAME="MediaPlayer"

WIDTH="192" HEIGHT="190" ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="1" ShowDisplay="1" autostart="1"> </EMBED>

</OBJECT>

And will produce the following video embedded into your webpage (Click 'Play' to start video):

And that’s how easy it is to embed a Windows Media video file straight into your webpage with PlanetStream's WMStream Package. Interested? Want to know more? You can email me on steven@netsecrets.co.uk or call me on 01386 792972.