Embedding media file -- controls don't work

[EagleM]

When I embed a video file in a page, it plays fine. But only the Play and the Stop buttons work. I need to be able to FF and RW it. It's not even letting me move the slider to FF and RW.
What am I doing wrong?

I'm embedding it like this:
<EMBED src="

http://www.myurl.org/myfile.wmv"

ShowStatusBar=true Autostart=true LOOP=false width="491" height="408" align="middle" style="border-style:double; border-color:#826331; ">

 

[bam720]

I just want to point out first off that the embed tag is not valid in W3C standards. If you want to embed t there is an object tag you should use. I haven't personally worked with it yet, but was doing an experiment and found this out.

To your question... How long is the video file? I usually find that I can not skip ahead or forward in a video that is streaming until the whole video has been downloaded per se. This is different than buffering. For e.g.
(Assuming Windows Media Player plug-in)
I open video up to watch. I see buffering XX% in lower left then video starts. If you look closely as the video is playing there is another bar that moves from left to Right showing how much of the video is downloaded. Once this bar if filled (complete), It actually disappears. This si when you can now begin jumping around in the file (forward and backward).

AFAIK there is no other way to implement controls until it is fully loaded. I hope this helps and sheds some light on your issue.

 

[EagleM]

I just looked up EMBED on htmlgoodies.com, and they don't seem to render the tag dead. No word of it being invalid, or of a replacement.

The problem is with the left-to-right slider bar also. I can't even drag it back to replay. Even when the video finishes playing, I can only start it from the beginning. The Win Media Player has the buttons for FF and RW, but they don't work, just like the slider bar.

 

[Vragabond]

EagleM, why are you asking for advice here if you are not willing to accept the advice then. Here's an article on A List Apart about embed and its replacements. But I am sure you can find yet another source that will claim using embed is cool.

 

[bam720]

EagleM,
I was not saying that the embed tag is dead and will not work. I was saying that the embed tag is not valid in terms of W3C standards. You can see in their FAQ's (

http://validator.w3.org/docs/help.html#faq-flash)

That they recommend using the object tag as listed in Vragabond's article. We are just trying to help make your website compliant.

Furthermore, you did not fully specify the entire problem. What type of video file are you using? If it is an asf file then I don't think you can jump forward or backward ever. How big is your file? Is it being fully loaded as I stated above? Sometimes it won't show the % loaded in "mini" mode and only full screen mode.

If you are desperate to have video controls then I'd recommend finding a video conversion tool and turning it into a Flash video (much like you tube) which you can then "embed" in the same manner

 

[EagleM]

It's a .wmv file. Plays about half an hour.
If it's not embedded, but opened in Windows Media Player, it does show the % loaded.

It's not my site. I need to make back end support for it, and also whatever else they think they want. The owner of the site tells me that he gets complaints from the viewers that they can't RW and FF. Even if it's opened in the Media Player, the slider bar is still not movable.

I'll read up on the w3c standards. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

 

[bam720]

Basically you won't have FF or RW control until the whole movie is loaded. I did see on Google a method for allowing you to skip to a preset time in the movie. I'm not sure how exactly it worked, but that may be a solution for you. A 30 min movie is going to take a long time to load, so a long time before the FF and RW controls become enabled/usable.

 

[EagleM]

It doesn't work, even when the video is finished.