QuickTime Embed
QuickTime Embed is a WordPress plugin made to ease the pain of inserting QuickTime movies manually. Once installed, QuickTime movies can be added in your blog posts using simple, intuitive inline [qt:] tags.
Geoff’s QuickTime Javascript is used to detect and insert QuickTime movie, making this implementation XHTML compliant.
Vodcasting is supported. Links to download iPod version of your movie can be inserted below your embedded QuickTime movie, if desired.
Features
- uses simple, intuitive tags to generate QuickTime movies for your posts
- standards compliant: valid XHTML
- movie autostart can be globally turned on or off
- supports poster movie
- supports text only output for RSS that ask reader to visit the original post for QuickTime content
- supports vodcasting
- requires javascript to display content, but will prompt user to enable Javascript when disabled
- no annoying ActiveX pop ups for users that do not have QuickTime installed
Usage
There are 3 different ways to use the [qt:] tags, each method differs by the number of arguments you need to provide within the tags. Here’s a list of the possible cases:
- Embed a QuickTime movie only
- Embed a QuickTime movie with poster movie
- Embed a QuickTime movie with poster movie and iPod video download link
QuickTime movie only
3 input arguments are required, they are:
- path to the movie
- movie’s width in pixels
- movie’s height in pixels
Example input:
Example output:
QuickTime movie with poster
To use poster movie, make sure $qt_useposter (see Options) is set to 1. If $qt_autoposter is set to 1, poster movie argument need not be entered i.e. the tag usage is the same as the previous case above.
If $qt_posterpath is not defined, the poster movie is assumed to be named with the same filename (no extension) as the movie but with “_poster.mov” appended to it. If it is, the poster movie is assumed to be in the poster directory and with the same filename as the movie file.
For explicit poster movie location, 4 input arguments are required, they are:
- path to the movie
- path to the poster movie
- movie’s width in pixels
- movie’s height in pixels
Take note that the height of your poster movie should be 16px larger than the height of the main movie. The reason for this is that when poster movie is shown, the QuickTime controller will be hidden.
Example input:
Example output:
QuickTime movie with poster and iPod video download
5 input arguments are required, they are:
- path to the movie
- path to the poster movie
- path to the iPod format video
- movie’s width in pixels
- movie’s height in pixels
The default text link for downloading the iPod format video are “iPod version”. You can change this text to something else such as “Download podcast” if you wish by changing some of the options. Please refer to the Options section for more information.
Example input:
Example output:
iPod version (2.7 MB)
Users without QuickTime or Javascript
Unfortunately, not all of your users might have QuickTime installed on their computer. When it happens, the mighty QuickTime Javascript will detect and output appropriate messages that prompt these users to download and install QuickTime onto their computers. Here’s an example screenshot that show you how this works:
While most modern browser supports Javascript, some users are too afraid that Javascript will screw up their computer so they turn it off just to be safe. This becomes a problem because this WordPress plugin relies on Javascript to display the QuickTime movie (in order to be XHTML compliant). To solve this problem, “noscript” tags are used to prompt these users to enable their Javascript and refresh the page for the QuickTime movie to show up. Here’s an example screenshot:
Text only output:
By default, this plugin will output text that reads “[See post to watch QuickTime movie]” for your RSS feeds only. I don’t think there’s a point to include any Javascript or QuickTime embedding code in your feeds. :P
Options
Hopefully this plugin will work as desired in an “out of the box” way so that you don’t need to change anything. However, few extra parameters can still be tweaked if you want to have extra control over the plugin’s output.
Since this plugin is still in its early stage, setting options via the WordPress admin panel is not supported yet. For now, you will need to open up the php file using either your favourite text editor or WordPress built-in plugin editor to change some of the variables you can find near the top of the code.
$qt_autostart: 0 to disable autostart, 1 to enable (strongly discouraged as it’s annoying from a user perspective)$qt_kioskmode: 0 to disable kiosk mode, 1 to enable (when enabled, right click menu is disabled)$qt_targetcache: 0 to disable caching of target movie, 1 to enable (target movie = main movie when poster movie is in effect)$qt_showcontrol: 0 to disable controller, 1 to enable (this only affects movies with no poster)$qt_useposter: 0 to disable poster feature, 1 to enable$qt_autoposter: 0 to disable automatic poster*, 1 to enable (take effect when no poster argument is given)$qt_globalposter: path to global poster (e.g. “/poster.mov”), this overrides everything, leave blank to disable$qt_posterpath: path to poster movies (e.g. “/poster/”), used when only filename is given as poster argument i.e. not absolute or site relative path$qt_moviepath: path to directory storing QuickTime movies (e.g. “/qt/”), used when only filename is given as movie argument$qt_ipodtext: text link to download iPod format video
* the plugin will append movie filename with “_poster.mov” as poster movie if $qt_posterpath is undefined, or look for poster movie with the same filename in the directory storing poster movies if defined
Installation
- Download and extract the “quicktime-embed” folder
- Upload the “quicktime-embed” folder to your WordPress plugin directory, usually “wp-content/plugins”
- Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel
Upgrade
- Deactivate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel
- Remove the “quicktime-embed” folder in your WordPress plugin directory
- Follow the installation guide above
Download
QuickTime Embed plugin 0.2 for WordPress (6kb .zip)
| Please donate to support active development of this plugin, thank you! |
If you like this plugin, express your love by donating and sharing this plugin with your readers!
Support
If you have any questions, suggestions, or found any bugs in this plugin, feel free to post them in your comments. I’ll try my best to answer them but there’s no guarantee, so don’t be disappointed if you do not hear back from me promptly. :/ If you find this plugin useful and feel like donating some money for my effort, please use the PayPal link below, thanks! <3
History
0.2 [2008.03.02]
- Major rewrite of the code
- Added: show hide controller feature
- Added: target cache feature
- Added: custom movie and poster path feature
- Added: global poster feature
- Added: global enable/disable poster feature
- Fixed: automatically detect .m4v filesize
- Fixed: height + 16px hassle
0.1.1 [2007.10.08]
- Fixed: server path error
- Added: kiosk mode support
0.1 [2006.07.09]
- Initial release
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Hi,
I hope you do not mind me asking, but please could you tell me the name of the girl and song in your demo mov file…. I really must get the whole song!
Thank very much.
Best Wishes,
Robin
Hi. The plugin works GREAT, right out of the box. Wondering about some playback options. My quicktimes are made to loop. Can I put in some tags to have the playback loop? That would be extremely helpful. If the plugiin wont support it currently, maybe you can give me some clues as to where to look so I can hack it myself.
Thanks again!
Hi – Thanks for your plug-in. I am using wp 2.2.1. I have two questions:
1) with standard .mov files, it loads and plays OK, but only half of the control strip shows at the bottom of the image. Is this a known issue and is there a workaround or fix?
2) do you support quicktime streaming (rtsp) with a quicktime streaming server and hinted .mov files?
Thanks,
James
Hi, your plugin is just what I need …
my little problem is: How can I center the movie in my post?
(using WP 2.2)
thx
sali
I have installed the plugin, but I’m new to all this, Where do I put the video file, I used transmit to upload it, into wp-content/images. How do I go about showing it in the blog. Sorry for being so dum.
What about .m4v files? Does it handle those?
Hi,
Thanks for the great plugin! I use it on this blog with video and a couple of others. I wanted to know if it was possible to have the videos automatically begin downloading when the user visits the page. On this page http://uniondocs.org/blog, you can see there are two large videos and since both are downloading simultaneously (but not playing simultaneously), it’s a lot of load on the browser.
Thanks!
Jesse
Hi, and thanks again for this extra plugin!
Same interrogation than Ryn : how is it possible to let people know about the feed? I want to make it visible in itunes, and I don’t know how to do! any solution?
Thanks again.
Thank you for the plug-in but I cannot get it to work at all. I am using Wordpress 2.2, but the script does not seem to work. Nothing is displayed in the post, although the script is generated in the source code.
As far as I can tell, I’ve followed all of the instructions. I have this problem in Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and IE 6.
Mr. Yaosan Yeo,
First, thank you for the excellent plugin. It’s very elegant, actually, and helpful for those of us who are woefully confused about all this coding shizzle. Thank you, really. I’ll try to drop a few dollars your direction after I get this month’s student loans out of the way.
I have question for you…
In the installation process above you said: “By default, this plugin will output text that reads “[See post to watch QuickTime movie]” for your RSS feeds only. I don’t think there’s a point to include any Javascript or QuickTime embedding code in your feeds. :P”
I appreciate your reasoning here as you have already provided the iPod link. None the less, is there any way to adapt the plugin slightly so that I might be able to offer a complete RSS feed? I’m a regular user of the video aggregator FireAnt, and unfortunately with this plugin I can only retrieve the poster .mov file. Any suggestions?
Thanks ahead of time. Sincerely,
Ryn Shane-Armstrong
http://www.sinovlog.com
P.S.
I’m having a terrible time with the Quicktime embed codes (with poster frame movie) in WordPress. I quite honestly don’t know how to manipulate the code to get what I need. Argh!
Just what I was looking for, thanks so much.
Hey Eyn,
I am having a bit of trouble getting your plugin to work on the home page of my site. it works in the archives and after the tag in the latest post but it wont work on the very front page of my site… any ideas?
it wont work here…
http://www.olsonimages.com
but it does here….
http://olsonimages.com/archives/70
is it because it is in the archives? For some reason it wont work above the tag.
By the way I like it very much, I have been searching for something like this for quite a while. Thanks…
hi,
sounds easy enough to use but i keep getting the blue Q with the question mark. where should i upload the .mov?
sorry…i’m new at this.
thank you,
tf
Looks great – and yes, it worked out of the box. Thanks for your work on this!
Hi Love your work!
Thought I would let you know of a neat application for your plugin. Im using it to display my panorama photos; well only one at the moment. You can find it here:
http://www.madteckhead.dreamhosters.com/blog/2007/04/12/procrastination-is-it-what-keeps-us-from-the-gods/
I would like to know if you others can see the controller. I can’t on firefox under os x. It is a little hard to work out how to use quicktime with panorama photos without the controller, so if anyone knows how to make it appear. That would be ace.
Also, is there a quick way to display a jpeg alternative in the event that quicktime is not supported for some reason?
Keep up the great work. If I sell any photos beceause of your plug in I won’t forget you.
All the best,
N
Hi,
I’m in the procecss of creating a site using wordpress.org; right now it’s running on a local server run by Apache 2.2. Using the plugin all I get is a blue quicktime Q. Am I missing something? Is this because I’m running off the local server? Will this change when I upload it to the host, because the quicktime movie I’m trying to run works fine on the Web site that I’m also running offline right now.
I’m not that new to coding and quite good at markup, but my php and skills with server-side languages is pretty basic.
Any advice or help would be great.
I can’t believe there’s only been 1 donation to this amazing plugin!
I use it. It’s practically the backbone of my content delivery. I appreciate you taking the time to provide it to the world, so I chipped in. :-)
Please don’t give up on it!
…cont. from above…
OK, that’s weird. Doesn’t work at work, but works at home, both using Firefox??
Any ideas why this would be the case? Is there something in my browser settings perhaps that would black out the controllers and slider at the bottom, but still enable clicking on them?
(Note: both play the movies fine, only controls different)
Cheers.
Hi,
I’ve downloaded the latest and got it working but have come across a problem that I couldn’t find the answer to… example at:
http://www.jamesshaw.co.nz/blog/?p=94
I don’t seem to get the controllers at the bottom, i.e. the time slider, play/pause button etc. I am using Firefox to view??
Any help much appreciated.
Realy cool plugin! Thanks for share!
kevin, glad you solved the problem. As a rule of thumb, if the zip folder comes in folder you usually upload the whole folder to the plugin directory. Reading the installation details carefully will also save you the trouble. ;)
Claudio, I guess a universal poster may do just what you want. I’m not too sure if the poster dimension poses any limitation on videos in different dimension, probably not. I might implement such a feature just so the movie won’t load immediately as soon as the page is loaded.
Tod, thanks for the donation. What you are looking for is the poster feature and as I mentioned above I might implement a universal poster setting in the next version. This way, you don’t have to manually add in the poster path each time you embed a QuickTime movie.
It should be…
[qt:/trailer/TrailerHIGH.mov /pix/image.jpg 500 375]
;)
Claudio –
Thanks! I’m a bit code retaded, so, if I have this for my existing video:
[qt:http://www.escapefromsuburbia.com/trailer/TrailerHIGH.mov 500 375]
I merely append after 375 with my website and folder info? 375/http://www.todbrilliant.com/pix/image.jpg 320 256]?
that seems dead wrong. . . I’m missing something.
Tod,
simply use the following tag in your posts:
[qt:/directories/your_video.mp4 /directories/your_sample.jpg 320 256]
PS. the only “bug” i found is that by using this kind of tag (incl. the poster movie, both it’s a .jpg or .mov or .mp4), the kioskmode set to TRUE value doesn’t work.
In fact when users click on the sample, then the movie is loaded and played.. the controller is full of “Save Video As” option! I didn’t find any way to fix it.
DAMN!! ^^
Cheers,
Claudio
1. Is it true that nary a soul has donated for your fine plugin? If so, that has changed as I just made a small donation of $20. The rest of you reading this, pony up!!
2. How do I get the video to display a static ‘holding page’ instead of a big black blank prior to a user pressing play?
Thanks thanks thanks!
Tod
hello,
I do believe that this plugin supports adding a poster movie directly via the markup:
[qt:path.to.movie.mov path.to.poster.mov sizeX sizeY+16]
I’m still trying to get a hand cursor over the poster movie. I’ve tried everything. I suspect the problem is that wordpress puts everything in tags.
best wishes,
Alex
Hi Claudio – you want to make a “poster movie” that is only the first frame of the movie, and when it is clicked it then loads the entire movie. Alex’s post above references a link with some instructions:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2006/09/29/two-slick-quicktime-tricks.html?page=last
And here is another link from Apple’s site with some instructions: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QT4WebPage/samplechap/special-10.html
We put a nice “Play” button on our poster movie so it is obvious that you should click it to play the movie.
Hope this helps!
-Don
Hi guys..
is that the possibility to implement code for the “Buffering Mode” of the player. If i post lots of videos, the page need to load all of these before complete.
I want that only if users click on the play button the video starts to load & play.
Thank you!
Claudio
Eyn,
Yes, the poster feature is exactly what I was looking for. Now it’s all working great. Thank you!
-Don
I’ve been looking everywhere for something like this – thank you! It works perfectly.
Hi Eyn,
I figured it out and the plugin works FANTASTICALLY.
The problem was that I had uploaded the individual files rather than the whole folder. Wordpress won’t let you upload folders into the right directory unless you go through the ftp folder. So I had originally just put the files individually into the plugin folder. That doesn’t work.
SO FOR anyone who uploaded the individual files, Disable the plugin, go back to the host, erase the files, upload the FOLDER(not the individual files) using the ftp rout. GUESS what, it works awesome after that.
Thanks a mill’ Eyn!!
Kevin
Eyn,
Please help me if you can!!!!
I am new to web programming but I can’t get this to work.
I’m using wordpress. I uploaded the QT movie to my host server. I couldn’t upload the embed plugin as a folder. So I uploaded it in seperate files in the directory(one by one.) THE plugin showed up on my plugin list and I activated it.
Problem is….well two problems actually:
1. I typed the tag [qt:/video/http://www.splinebinder.com/REEL4web.mov 480 376] in the “write page” space in the “Code” option. Then I published it and it never showed up. I TRIED the same thing in the “Write post” but had the same result. I guess I may not be typing the code in the right place or have it wrong.
2. THE second problem is that I’m not sure if I uploaded the video into the right place on my host server. If I go to that page directly, the video will play from that page after a lengthy download. However, this plugin is not working for me.
I am desperately in need of help here.
Kevin
Deems, you should look up the poster feature in the FLV Embed documentation page.
Don, you’re probably looking for the poster feature. When using a poster, the movie is not loaded until the user click on the poster frame to start the movie. More details on how to use a poster frame can be found in the documentation above.
Neil, thanks for bringing this issue up once again. I just haven’t had the time to make a new version so the problem just kinda stuck with the current release. Maybe I should just edit a few lines of code and upload a new zip file. :p
I just wanted to let you know that there is a minor bug in your plugin, which is only apparent if you set up Wordpress as your site homepage, but keep it in its own directory as described in the Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory).
To fix the bug, you need to edit lines 97 and 114 to fetch bloginfo(’wpurl’) instead of bloginfo(’url’). Otherwise, the link to your Javascript file won’t work, and the plugin “breaks.”
Thanks for the cool plugin, though!
Eyn – thank you so much for this excellent plug-in. We’re using it on our blog at KidConfidence now.
One thing that I’ve run into – if you post large movie files it really slows things down when the main blog page is loaded… Is there any way to post an image that will start the movie when clicked?
I found some code examples mentioned in earlier comments but they sort of defeat the purpose of the plug-in because it required the poster to add a lot of Javascript code manually to each post.
Thanks again for the nice plug-in!
-Don
Eyn, thank you for your suggestion regarding dimensions, I think that it has to be the problem, what else COULD it be right? I’m sure that’s exactly what it is, but the the FLV player is working out just fine, thank you for making it. I was the one who posted the question about being able to link the poster from somewhere else. And I wanted to ask you and everybody here who knows a hell lot more about this stuff than me, do you think for now I can trick it somehow? Maybe with a swf that loads the FLV when it’s clicked? I am not that good at programing but I think something like that could be possible no? As you can see on my site I post a few videos at once and when you see them in the row, it looks kind of boring all black with no picture, so I am really trying to find a way to make to change that. I have the same thing on myspace and that also looks pretty crappy. Thank you for your help and thank you again for making these things, it is greatly appreciated!! Amazing job!
Eyn – I checked out that Audio Player Plugin and it worked perfectly! I just plugged it in, told it to make all mp3s into flash, and instantly they were. I’m convinced that there are no limits to what can be done by the community.
My next goal is to turn my logo/banner into the player itself!
thanks again,
Allison
Allison, I haven’t tried it myself but you might be able to do it, just put in 16px for height and whatever width you want, this way it will only show the controller. If your audio files is in mp3, you might want to take a look at the popular Audio Player plugin.
russ welti, I’m not sure if you are referring to this plugin or just generic QuickTime embed. For this plugin, yes, the QuickTime white screen will momentarily flash for about a second when you first load the page. This is due to the Javascript implementation and the way how the Javascript is written. If you find this distracting, you might want to consider the “classic” way of embedding without using Javascript.
Deems, looks like you’re using my FLV Embed plugin for now. Anyway, I checked out your site earlier before you make the switch and the problem you had earlier is due to the QuickTime movie’s dimension being much larger than the width and height you specified in your qt tags. You should reduce the QuickTime movie’s height and width to fit your blog’s column width. Usually 480px is the widest you should go for and many theme’s column is even less than that.
jaz, thanks for offering help to other users, but I guess Deems has the right path earlier, it’s just the problem I mention above.
Deems,
I think the problem is that you have the file path to the movie incorrect.
Hi, thank you for making this plug-in.
I was wondering if maybe you can tell me what I am doing wrong? Because when I insert the code, the QT window appears in my blog but I can’t see the player and so I can’t start the movie. What do you think could be the problem? Thank you in advenced.
On Windows XP, even with both the Quicktime Player preferences cache set to 5 GB (gigabytes) and the browser (FF or IE) cache set to maximum sizes, I still see a white blank box with the trademark “blue QT” logo for about one second when I refresh a web page with Quicktime-embedded movies.
I can see that the browser has these movies in its cache, and I’ve told QT to use a huge cache, but still I have to see a momentary white box that flashes and jerks a bit before the content appears.
Wrote the HTTP headers of my web page to indicate that the content never changes, too.
Any idea why this happens? I suppose I could try a poster frame, but since the content is already cached it should be instantly available and I really want my movie to auto-start, which it does…
Two facts:
The same web page on a Mac in Safari or FF starts instantly, no white box with blue Q.
If I convert the movies to Flash video they start immediately on any platform or browser ( my current only solution ).
thanks!!
R.Welti
I read your comment just in time to change my script before the show recording! so glad you sent that correction on your gender and name – now all that’s left for me to mess up is my pronunciation!
thanks again for a great product, I used it twice more since I wrote my previous comment.
i wonder if there’s a way to adapt this to do audio too? My links to QT audio always open up a new browser window with that plain old tiny little player thing in it.
Alex, I haven’t tried to implement the trick myself but if I do get it to work after trying I might add it as an optional feature in the next version. ;)
Allison, glad to know this plugin is working fine for you! I’m actually a guy :P and my real name is Yaosan (you may find it in the source code but I guess most users aren’t programmers), eyn is just an alias I use on the web. Your podcast sounds interesting and I’ll definitely check it out!
i got the idea to look for a way to embed QT into my Wordpress blog, and within 6 minutes I had your plugin up and running with my videos! I love the power of the internet and the generosity of people like you! I will be podcasting my enthusiasm tonite (2/17/07) so if you want to hear the praise, head on over to the NosillaCast podcast! I’m giving credit to Eyn as the developer as she’s been answering – I hope that’s right! thanks again for a great tool!
is it possible to get a hand cursor on top of the poster movie??
I’ve been trying CSS but I just can’t get it to work.
Here is a link to an article by o’reilly: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2006/09/29/two-slick-quicktime-tricks.html?page=last
thank you again for the great plugin.
Hi jaz, really nice suggestion there, thanks for bringing this issue to my attention. I used a plugin called “Kill Preview” so I don’t have the preview problem myself but I’ll definitely add this optional feature to the next version, which unfortunately won’t be released anytime soon seeing I’m extremely busy with my studies. :(
hey eyn,
awesome plugin! this is making it very easy for my client to embed quicktime in their posts, and the deconcept script is the best one out there in my opinion. :)
one thing — i was finding it difficult that the movies load in the preview pane on the write post page, and the rich text editor doesn’t kick in until the page is done loading.
if you have a large video in your post, its a pain to have to wait for the whole video to download in the preview pane before you can use the rich text buttons. to fix it, i put the following line of code as the first line in the ai_quicktime function:
if ($_GET['preview'] != true)
now the movies don’t load in the preview pane on the write post page. i was thinking you could make this one of the options.. or people could just copy my code here if they are having the same problem. cheers!
Thanks very much for your answer, and the time you spend for your plugin! Now everything is OK, it works fine! (My trouble is now how to find another plugin to automatise RSS and video podcast, but this is another thing!)
aubrey island, I don’t have the time to update this plugin yet but if I need help with the iTunes support I’ll definitely keep in touch with you, thanks for the offer!
Cyril, you might want to show me the page with the error, and I don’t really get what you mean there. You might want to look into your poster movie and see if it’s in the right format. To make a poster, you open an image with QuickTime, then choose “Save as…”, then “self contained movie”. Regarding the streaming, someone asked the same question earlier and I believe it does work with rtsp links, or you could try the patch I posted in one of my comments earlier, but there’s no guarantee it’s going to work nicely. :p
Paris, the reason why the plugin doesn’t work for you is because you didn’t install the plugin properly. If you read the installation instruction properly, it says upload the whole folder (not the files individually), and that’s what you need. You shouldn’t take out the files from the folder and upload them into the plugin root directory. ;) Hopefully it works for you once you make the changes! You should deactivate the plugin, remove the files, then upload the “quicktime-embed” folder you extracted from the zip.
Hello,
Your plugin has everything I need, but for some reason I can’t get it to work. I installed and activated the plugin, then entered the code, but nothing happens.
Code:
[qt:/video/droplets.mov 600 100]
Link to the page where I wrote the code:
http://parisvideoweb.com/index.php/services
Any help will greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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