QuickTime Embed

Latest version:
0.2
2008.03.02

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.

QuickTime Embed in action

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:

[qt:/video/demo.mov 480 240]

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:

[qt:/video/demo.mov /video/demo_poster.mov 480 240]

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:

[qt:/video/demo.mov /video/demo_poster.mov /video/demo.m4v 480 240]

Example output:

iPod 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:

QuickTime accessibility

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:

Javascript accessibility

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)

* This plugin has been downloaded 4370 times since May 9, 2007
( 1576 times since version 0.2 )

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

186 responses so far ↓

Pages: « 4 [3] 2 1 » Show All

Michael Kelly // Jan 21, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Hi,

I installed the plugin to wordpress but for some reason it will not publish my QT movies
I uploaded AC_QuickTime.js file to my server also

This is the code I posted
[qt:/mikekellytv.com/3.mov 640 496]

Any help really appreciated

Thanks

Mike
Embed QuickTime at Mohr Blog // Jan 18, 2008 at 3:14 am

[...] http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/quicktime-embed/ [...]
john // Jan 16, 2008 at 3:56 pm

I’m clearly doing something wrong because I used the [qt:/video/demo.mov 480 256] type tag and nothing shows up. It would appear that I’m an idiot and could use some help.
PJ // Jan 1, 2008 at 12:24 am

Thanks for the plugin, it’s working great on my site.

I was just wondering who the girl in the demo video on this page is, she’s really cute!
Vlog #2 | No Barriers with Joel Barish // Dec 27, 2007 at 7:04 pm

[...] Posted on 18 December 2007 by admin http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/quicktime-embed/ [...]
Fenix // Dec 15, 2007 at 6:39 am

just found this, amazing plugin, thank you SO much for creating it. just one question, it seems the border around my movies is white and thus, you can’t see filesize, etc. i’ve reviewed the php file, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to correct this. any help on how to do so would be appreciated!
snoogly // Dec 12, 2007 at 7:12 pm

For some reason it won’t resize the video (WP 2.3.1)

Instead, it just adds lots of white space around the video - but won’t resize the actual video.
BC Brit - Mark Cannon blog // Dec 2, 2007 at 10:26 pm

[...] is not lost though as I’ve found a plugin for WordPress (WordPress is what I used to build this site) that hopefully gets around the issue. [...]
Ernie // Dec 1, 2007 at 10:11 pm

Two questions about your great plug-in:

1) does it work with mp4s

and 2) Is there a max file size for WordPress? (2.2.1)

The file I’m trying to use is almost 50 mb, and here’s the code: [qt:http://www.erniemunick.com/movies/i'llbeallright5.mov 320 256]

Nothing came up but a big Q

Wussup?

Thanks for your super cool plug-in,

Ernie
学志 » 文章存档 » QuickTime-embed的用法 // Nov 26, 2007 at 12:13 pm

[...] 插件地址：http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/quicktime-embed/ [...]
Jamie // Nov 21, 2007 at 12:35 pm

Hi Nice plugin!

Will it work if you set the height and width to percentage values?

Often we don’t know the esact height and width of a movie so using percentages is often the best way to have it fit the space allowed.
hiro // Nov 20, 2007 at 9:21 pm

this is amazing!
i didn’t know that you wrote wordpress plugins too.
very cool.
MyCSS is awesome too.
glad to see another web developer keeping XHTML compliance in mind. :)
Grant // Nov 14, 2007 at 7:09 pm

Great plugin, worked awesome but I can’t for the life of me figure out…

1. how to get the control bar on the bottom - yes, I added the 16 pixels

2. How to turn off the autostart

Obviously, I’m an idiot.
Ran // Nov 13, 2007 at 12:41 pm

I think this will solve a lot of the problems that people are posting here. At first it looks like i’m just getting a place holder, no control or anything. I triple checked the path and it was correct. Then when I double clicked the place holder, it played the movie!

I realized that it’s simply resizing the frame to my specified dimension and not the actual movie. I fixed this problem by adding the following in the quicktime-embed.php file:

$code .= ‘myQTObject.addParam(”scale”,”aspect”);’ . “\n”;

(hopefully the code render correctly here)
I placed it right before this line:

$code .= ‘myQTObject.write();’ . “\n”;

Hope this helps!
Marc // Nov 11, 2007 at 2:52 pm

Hi, great plug-in - Any chance we can get this working with the iPod Touch and the iPhone? Somehow your Javascript routine is not compatible with the mobile Safari browser.
eyn // Nov 4, 2007 at 2:48 pm

Albo, if you open the quicktime-embed.php file you’ll see $qt_kioskmode = 0, just change the 0 to 1 to enable the feature.

As for the odd behavior of movie not loading, it is most likely due to wrong path to the quicktime movie. Double check the path to make sure everything’s correct.

For the custom field processing, I have no idea how that would work, one could probably write a function that retrieve the custom field data from the database if the post id is known, then parse it with the ai_quicktime() function.
Albo // Nov 2, 2007 at 12:18 am

Thank you for this excellent plugin. One question I have though is: how do you enable kiosk mode?

Thanks!
Importing Video Into iMovie HD - Loss of Quality // Oct 30, 2007 at 11:42 pm

[...] I stumbled onto a very cool QuickTime Embed WordPress plugin that makes posting video to your blog a [...]
Rob // Oct 21, 2007 at 12:14 am

Adam, I’m seeing this behavior too, in both FF and IE with WP 2.2.2. The poster mode displays the poster, but there’s no controls loaded for QT and the movie doesn’t load.

Odd.
Tyson // Oct 17, 2007 at 8:22 pm

Any suggestions on making it process the code in a WordPress custom field? I tried adding to the plug-in .php file:

add_filter(’custom_tags’, ‘ai_quicktime’);
add_filter(’the_meta’, ‘ai_quicktime’);

And in the template, I’m calling a custom field:
get_post_custom_values(”gallery”)

but the plugin isn’t processing the [qt:] code in that custom field…
POP Magazine » Blog Archive » What about Quicktime movies? // Oct 17, 2007 at 5:56 am

[...] It is also very easy to embed a quicktime movie. You can also do poster frames like. I am using the plug-in from this page: http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/quicktime-embed/ [...]
JD // Oct 9, 2007 at 11:17 pm

Fantastic eyn, worked perfectly. And thanks for getting back to me so promptly.

JD
eyn // Oct 9, 2007 at 11:08 pm

JD, try to insert a white space between movie and poster, for example:
[qt:/z_other/examples/wwe.mov /z_other/examples/wwe_poster.mov 412 220]

btw there’s no simple way of center aligning the QuickTime player at the moment, I will try to add in a class name for the player in the next version.
JD // Oct 9, 2007 at 8:40 pm

Okay so this worked great:
[qt:/z_other/examples/wwe.mov 412 220]

But this doesn’t work:
[qt:/z_other/examples/wwe.mov/z_other/examples/wwe_poster.mov 412 220]
All I get is a placeholder

Is there some trick to getting poster movies to work?

Help appreciated. JD
Orion Star // Oct 8, 2007 at 3:39 pm

Beautiful! Your new version fixed my issue. Thank you so much for a GREAT plugin. I made a donation!
eyn // Oct 8, 2007 at 3:23 pm
For those of you who is having problems:
- If the QuickTime player shows up but does not play, then usually it could be a path problem to your .mov file, you can check the path by highlighting your video area and choose “view selected source” in Firefox. If problem persist, try using absolute URL i.e those that start wtih “http:”
- If the QuickTime player does not show up, then you can try download the newer 0.1.1 version which fixes a server path problem that could happen to some users
- This plugin only support QuickTime movie i.e. .mov at the moment, it might work with QuickTime VR, streaming etc. but I have not tested any of them
fyi, I just released a small updated version of this plugin which fixes the server path error and also added kiosk mode support. I do not have the time to fully code the next version at the moment, which I will hopefully be doing very soon. Sorry for the lack of updates, I just have too many other projects on hand at the moment. :/
JD // Oct 8, 2007 at 8:10 am

Hi there,
I’ve followed the instructions and checked out the various posts but am not having any luck. http://www.motionworks.com.au/?p=152
I’d be happy to pay for assistance.

Thanks,

JD
Orion Star // Oct 3, 2007 at 11:39 pm

Hi,

I installed your plugin, and was loving it. Then one day I browsed to the page using the plugin, and my movie disappeared. I checked the source, and noticed the script was appearing. The movie should appear movie at the top, but it isn’t.

My page is:
http://citizencinema.net/9-at-night/

The code I’m using in the post is:
‘[qt:http://citizencinema.net/content/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/9night_medium.mov http://citizencinema.net/content/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/9night_preview2.mov 360 286]‘

I tried uninstalling it, deleting it, and deactivating all my plugins to no avail. Any idea what’s going on here?

Thanks,
Orion
Chris // Sep 25, 2007 at 8:16 pm

Hi,
again me.. i installed quicktime embed in my blogs, but the controller don’t appear under the videos. (+16px added)

Is there something to change in the .php file?

Example: http://www.ferndesign.biz/?page_id=8 or http://www.ferndesign.biz/?p=12

Thanks Chris
nuahi » Blog Archive » QuickTime Embed - another cool wordpress plug in! // Sep 17, 2007 at 12:21 am

[...] QuickTime Embed from Channel AI Community Blog! [...]
Eric // Sep 14, 2007 at 9:12 pm

This looks like a great plugin, thanks. I’m having a problem though- my video won’t play until it has been downloaded in its entirety. Rather than start playing as soon as possible while showing the download progress, it just displays the Quicktime logo until it’s all downloaded. Any ideas how to fix this?
Wordpress Plugins I use atm » article » Marcs Blog // Sep 12, 2007 at 5:42 am

[...] Embed (http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/quicktime-embed/) → Ⅰ once embedded a quicktime video into my blog. These are the remains (nice for e.g. [...]
Chris // Sep 9, 2007 at 9:26 pm

Hi,
great plugin.. thanks for that..
only one thing to the validation - in the php file - the Tags including the noscript are in the wrong closing order… so far -
Renee // Aug 28, 2007 at 9:07 pm

I’m going to ask the same question as above, does it work for .m4v files? Thanks so much!!!
Embed // Aug 17, 2007 at 5:36 pm

Very cool. Though I am really interested to see how this could be done with even less code. We have been working on a Embed tool that is code free. Is there a way to mesh these two tools?
Daniel // Aug 10, 2007 at 9:49 pm

Does it work for quicktime VR panoramas ?
Rob // Jul 12, 2007 at 8:10 am

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
Agatean Empire (dot) Net » Tomando forma // Jul 11, 2007 at 4:48 pm

[...] contrapartida, pesan mucho los vídeos. Para gestionar los QTs, estoy usando un plugin muy chulo, quicktime embed, que permite 3 modos para colocarlo, a pelo (que es la más común), con póster (deja una foto [...]
Lucio // Jul 9, 2007 at 11:46 pm

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!
James // Jul 6, 2007 at 12:57 am

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
sali // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:47 pm

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
PanoTools Blogs » Blog Archive » Quicktime Plugin Installed // Jun 20, 2007 at 7:02 am

[...] Embedding Help [...]
Craig Wills // Jun 18, 2007 at 10:09 am

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.
Charles Stricklin // Jun 11, 2007 at 1:48 am

What about .m4v files? Does it handle those?
Jesse // Jun 8, 2007 at 10:36 am

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
Cyril sauvenay // Jun 4, 2007 at 8:44 pm

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.
Adam // Jun 3, 2007 at 6:14 pm

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.
Ryn Shane-Armstrong // Jun 2, 2007 at 12:57 pm

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!
Norm Jenson // May 28, 2007 at 1:30 pm

Just what I was looking for, thanks so much.
WP Plugins DB » Blog Archive » QuickTime Embed // May 20, 2007 at 3:53 am

[...] Visit [...]