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Streaming Video Files with Quicktime

To create a true streaming environment (i.e. where files are only streamed, not downloaded to the user's computers) you'll need to have access to a streaming server. See Apple Quicktime Server. The example below show how to simulate streaming with progressive download, which is a lot simpler.


Hyperlinks to Quicktime Files

The simplest way to add Quicktime to a web page is to make a hyperlink from the page directly to the video file like so:

<a href="video01.mov">Click here to view video</a>

When the end user clicks this hyperlink, the video file will begin downloading. In some cases it will begin playing once a portion of the file has been retrieved, but in other cases the entire file will need to be downloaded first. For this reason, we do not recommend using a simple link.


Embedding Quicktime Files

A better method is to embed the Quicktime movie in a web page with something like this:

<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" WIDTH="320"HEIGHT="180"
CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<PARAM name="SRC" VALUE="videofilename.mov">
<PARAM name="AUTOPLAY" VALUE="true">
<PARAM name="CONTROLLER" VALUE="false">
<EMBED SRC="videofilename.mov" WIDTH="320" HEIGHT="180" AUTOPLAY="true" CONTROLLER="false" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">
</EMBED>
</OBJECT>

Notice that this method uses two tags: <object> and <embed>. This is for maximum browser compatibility. You will need to set the file name and attributes for both tags.

See a working example of this code here.