Display something interesting while playing some sound?

[David Segall]

I have a sound clip on my web site. If I click on the "play" button at
the top left of <http://www.profectus.com.au/credits.html> I get a
very boring display provided by my default sound player which happens
to be Apple Quick Time. I assume that you will see the image that is
provided by your default sound player.

How can I specify what is displayed after a visitor chooses to play
the audio clip? Just displaying the current page would be better than
Apple's player image.

 

[dorayme]

I have a sound clip on my web site. If I click on the "play" button at
the top left of <http://www.profectus.com.au/credits.html> I get a
very boring display provided by my default sound player which happens
to be Apple Quick Time. I assume that you will see the image that is
provided by your default sound player.

How can I specify what is displayed after a visitor chooses to play
the audio clip? Just displaying the current page would be better than
Apple's player image.

How about loading it up to youtube because it is really easy, and
then embedding it using the mark up they supply. Should it not be
rather the same principle as with video?

You will get something like:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="http://www.youtube.com/v/..." width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="

...">
<param name="description" value="Description of video goes here">
<param name="allowScriptAcess" value="always">
<param name="quality" value="best">
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff">
<param name="scale" value="noScale">
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/"
title="External link to Adobe Flash">
<img src="../images/noflash.png" width="300" height="192"
alt="Flash Player is required message" title="Flash Player is
required to watch this movie"></a>
</object>

works nicely.

 

[Neredbojias]

I have a sound clip on my web site. If I click on the "play" button
at the top left of <http://www.profectus.com.au/credits.html> I get a
very boring display provided by my default sound player which happens
to be Apple Quick Time. I assume that you will see the image that is
provided by your default sound player.

How can I specify what is displayed after a visitor chooses to play
the audio clip? Just displaying the current page would be better than
Apple's player image.

In all sincerity, the best advice I can give you is get rid of
Quicktime. It is one of the worst programs I have ever seen. I had it
once for about 2 days, got sick of all the adware/spyware and crap I
didn't want, and had a helluva time getting rid of it, but I did. I
will never install that particular piece of shit again.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

In all sincerity, the best advice I can give you is get rid of
Quicktime. It is one of the worst programs I have ever seen. I had it
once for about 2 days, got sick of all the adware/spyware and crap I
didn't want, and had a helluva time getting rid of it, but I did. I
will never install that particular piece of shit again.

Dumped that turkey long ago and use OSS QuickTime Alternative instead

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm

 

[cwdjrxyz]

I have a sound clip on my web site. If I click on the "play" button at
the top left of <http://www.profectus.com.au/credits.html> I get a
very boring display provided by my default sound player which happens
to be Apple Quick Time. I assume that you will see the image that is
provided by your default sound player.

How can I specify what is displayed after a visitor chooses to play
the audio clip? Just displaying the current page would be better than
Apple's player image.

I often give the choice of several audio formats. If one wants only
one, flash audio likely can be heard by more people on their computer
than any other format. See http://www.cwdjr.net/audio5/RoscoeSings.php
for an example. Since this is a php page, see http://www.cwdjr.net/audio5/RoscoeSings.txt
to see what I am doing. The selection button bar is just a png. It is
used as an imap to select the kind of player desired. Once the server
knows what you want, it downloads just the code needed for the audio
format selected , which is much more simple than the codes for all of
the formats. View the source code of the php url to see what gets
downloaded after you make a selection of formats.

If you only want to offer one format, the php code becomes much more
simple as you do not need all of the imap logic for selection of the
format and need code for only one file type.

Some formats such as mp3 can be played by many players, and most
modern computers allow the computer owner to make one player primary
for a specific file type such as mp3. Thus if someone who views your
page has QT set as primary for mp3, likely the mp3 will be played on
QT. In some cases you will get a box that will allow you to select
opening with a specific player, or just downloading the file, but in
other cases you just start opening in the QT player(actually you
download to a temporary cache and QT automatically opens when the
download is complete.

 

[David Segall]

How about loading it up to youtube because it is really easy, and
then embedding it using the mark up they supply. Should it not be
rather the same principle as with video?

You will get something like:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="http://www.youtube.com/v/..." width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="

...">
<param name="description" value="Description of video goes here">
<param name="allowScriptAcess" value="always">
<param name="quality" value="best">
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff">
<param name="scale" value="noScale">
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/"
title="External link to Adobe Flash">
<img src="../images/noflash.png" width="300" height="192"
alt="Flash Player is required message" title="Flash Player is
required to watch this movie"></a>
</object>

works nicely.

Thanks dorayme. I tested it with a video clip
<http://profect.us/notes_youtube.html> and it works but...

1. It comes with YouTube's decorations. Since the technique requires
that the visitor has Flash can't I just use the Flash player and a
video clip on my HTML server or does it require some server side code
to show the video?

2. It needs a video and I can't bring myself to just use a blank
screen or one of those awful "visualizations". I like the idea of
"following the bouncing ball" on scrolling IBM 704 assembler language
code but it would be a lot of work!

3. The visitor must use Flash. Isn't there a similar way of embedding
the player in a page that would work with whatever audio player the
user has associated with my audio content?

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Thanks dorayme. I tested it with a video clip
<http://profect.us/notes_youtube.html> and it works but...

1. It comes with YouTube's decorations. Since the technique requires
that the visitor has Flash can't I just use the Flash player and a
video clip on my HTML server or does it require some server side code
to show the video?

2. It needs a video and I can't bring myself to just use a blank
screen or one of those awful "visualizations". I like the idea of
"following the bouncing ball" on scrolling IBM 704 assembler language
code but it would be a lot of work!

3. The visitor must use Flash. Isn't there a similar way of embedding
the player in a page that would work with whatever audio player the
user has associated with my audio content?

YouTube uses the modern flash method flv/swf that requires 2 files on
the server. The swf file is a container file that includes the custom
flash player and possible text, links, etc. You link to the swf
container file. When the flv/swf file is encoded from some input
video, a swf container file and a flv(flash video) file are both
produced and both must be uploaded to the same directory on the
server. The encoder writes the swf container file so that it
automatically starts downloading the flv to a temporary file on the
computer. If the download rate is greater than that needed to keep
ahead of the playback, the video streams, even on an ordinary html
server. If download is too slow, the video will stop playing from time
to time to allow more download. However if you let the video complete
and play it again, it will play without stopping because the flv is
now in a temporary file on the computer. You are getting the swf
container file written by YouTube when you link to them. Some
programs, including recent Real players, will download and keep the
flv file from a flv/swf. A few players, including Real, will play an
isolated flv, but many still likely have no player that will play an
isolated flv. So, even if you can download the flv YouTube file, you
need an encoder to allow you to use it as video input to output a
proper flv/swf pair with your choices of custom player features in the
swf container file. Encoders that will output a proper flv/swf pairs
of files can be had for around US$100 for a good one, which is much
less than a complete flash suite. Input videos allowed usually include
most high resolution video formats. Since most modern computers have
flash - many more than have WMP, Real, QT, etc. many large sites that
once used other formats have now switched to flv/swf for video
content.

See http://www.cwdjr.net/flash/Fatty.php for an example. Excuse the
poor video of the 1917 clip - even so, it is in better condition than
most people born in1917 or earlier . The page is php because there
is an elaborate header exchange between the server and computer to
determine if the browser will accept true xhtml served properly as
application/xhtml+xml. One must associate this mime type with an
extension on the server. Since .html is already associated with
ordinary html, one might assign .xhtml for true xhtml. If one does not
do this and uses even a perfect xhtml page with the extension .html,
it is only served as an ordinary html page and thus will work on IE
browsers which can not handle true xhtml properly served. Thus my page
is served as xhtml for most modern browsers, and the code is converted
to html 4.01 strict for IE or other browsers that will not support
true xhtml. Thus, unless you serve xhtml properly and do something to
allow IE browsers to view the page, you are wasting your time writing
the page in xhtml if you do not intend to serve it properly.

View the source code of my page mentioned above on an IE browser There
you will see the code needed when you use html 4.01 strict. Then view
the source on most other fairly recent browsers including Firefox,
Opera etc. There you will see the code written as xhtml 1.1.

As I mentioned, the directory used on the server must include both the
flv and swf files. See http://www.cwdjr.net/flash/Fatty.swf for the
swf file which is automatically linked internally to the flv file. See
http://www.cwdjr.net/flash/Fatty.flv for the flv which you may be able
to view if you have a recent Real player or something else that will
support a raw flv.

 

[Neredbojias]

Dumped that turkey long ago and use OSS QuickTime Alternative instead

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm

Thanks for the link but nowadays I don't need it. At all. That's
enough on that, though. How about that html5?

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

How about that html5?

What about it? At the moment it is as real as Web2.0.

 

[Neredbojias]

What about it? At the moment it is as real as Web2.0.

As a standard, yes, it is nothing - yet. But I think the wwwc is
finally going in the right direction; the potential implied in html5
can, if it is handled correctly, make it at least a 1 quantum level
improvement over all that has come before. -As opposed to the nonsense
of xhtml.