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:

1. Embed a QuickTime movie only
2. Embed a QuickTime movie with poster movie
3. Embed a QuickTime movie with poster movie and iPod video download link

 

QuickTime movie only
3 input arguments are required, they are:

1. path to the movie
2. movie’s width in pixels
3. 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:

1. path to the movie
2. path to the poster movie
3. movie’s width in pixels
4. 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:

1. path to the movie
2. path to the poster movie
3. path to the iPod format video
4. movie’s width in pixels
5. 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

1. Download and extract the “quicktime-embed” folder
2. Upload the “quicktime-embed” folder to your WordPress plugin directory, usually “wp-content/plugins”
3. Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel

Upgrade

1. Deactivate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel
2. Remove the “quicktime-embed” folder in your WordPress plugin directory
3. Follow the installation guide above

Download

QuickTime Embed plugin 0.2 for WordPress (6kb .zip)

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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