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 5867 times since May 9, 2007
( 3073 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

200 responses so far ↓

Pages: [4] 3 2 1 » Show All

Jason // Nov 26, 2008 at 6:45 pm

Great plugin which I’ve been using - only one thing - is it possible to stop the movie from auto loading? I’d like it to start loading the movie only if the viewer clicks on the play button.

Thanks!
Dwayne // Nov 24, 2008 at 10:31 am

How can I get this working for dreamweaver CS3. I need the java scipt and correct HTML Code. I would like to embed this on my website. http://www.db84.com
Cris // Nov 9, 2008 at 9:53 am

It seems that Firefox 3.0.3 is not compatible with Quicktime 7.5.5. At first I thought that the problems I was experiencing may have had something to do with the Quicktime Embed plug-in, but that is not the case. The problem is with H.264 streaming media (I am NOT referring to progressive download, but to media streaming from a Darwin Streaming Server). When I enter the URL for the streaming movie in the address bar of Firefox 3.0.3, I get the same behavior as with the embedded video: The stream ‘breaks up’ and remains screwed uo until the next key frame. Safari doesn’t show this problem. Also, it is not particular to one movie. All my Quicktime movies now have this problem with Firefox 3.0.3.

Most are ~300 kbps reference movies, though some have alternates for different data rates.
H.264 encoded, 24 fps, frame re-ordering is on. Encoded with Apple Compressor 2

I am wondering what would happen if I deselected frame re=ordering before encoding. Frame re-ordering is supposed to make it easier to decode.

There is no problem what-so-ever playing the videos directly in Quicktime Player ap.
Cris // Nov 6, 2008 at 12:38 am

I’d like to give viewers the option to view embedded quicktime movies full screen.

Quicktime Player 7 now includes a full screen feature in the non-pro version, however, there is no full screen toggle in the plugin’s control bar. Given this deficiency, might there be a work around?
Pete // Nov 1, 2008 at 9:48 am

Hi
Is there any tutorial on using this plug in? I’ve uploaded my QT movie to a folder in wp-content/videos and can’t figure out how to link it using these instructions (after I activated the plug in). Thanks.
Pete
Cris // Oct 31, 2008 at 7:50 pm

I am having a major problem using Quicktime Embed.

I have a one-hour long movie on a Darwin Streaming (rtsp) Server, and a reference movie with added chapter track on an (html) web server. Codec is h.264 and data rate is ~300 kbps.

The reference movie is about 4 K. The reference movie plays fine when I open the file on my computer’s hard drive in Quicktime Player. It also plays fine when I open the URL for the reference movie that I had uploaded to the web server,

However, the video that is embedded in my wordpress blog breaks up.

This is not a data rate problem on my end. In fact, I can play both the reference movie that resides on my computer, and the reference move uploaded to the web server, at the same time and there is no skipping or break-up. Again, both the reference movies point to the actual file on the Darwin streaming server.

Here is the URL for the wordpress post:

http://tompkinsagainstwar.org/2008/10/31/video-resisting-empire-%E2%80%94laila-al-arian-and-camilo-mejia-at-cornell-102708/

Here is the URL for the reference movie:

http://cmprovideo.net/streaming1/Resisting_Empire_10-27-08/Camilo_Mejia_Laila_Al-Arian.mov

BTW, the documentation for Quicktime Embed no longer mentions adding 16 pixels for the playhead. My video is 480 pixels x 270 pixels. I tried both the exact pixel size and with extra pixels; 480 x 286. The behavior was the same in both cases.
Pady // Oct 26, 2008 at 6:20 pm

I have the plug in running, two things though…
1 The click to play instruction is missing.
2 The movie moves up a couple of pixels when you click on the poster still.

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

Paddy
David // Oct 16, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Having trouble figuring out where to point it to in terms of the URL. I uploaded it to the media section, and can play both the movie and the poster, but no dice no matter how much or little of the path I include in the arguments. Kinda frustrating.
Albo // Sep 20, 2008 at 8:37 am

@D.J. - Creating a QuickTime movie with poster is the answer, and is detailed above.
D.J. // Sep 19, 2008 at 6:37 pm

Is there a way to configure the video so that it does not automatically download as soon as the page is loaded?

If I have 5 posts on a page, I don’t necessarily want a 30MB video to download unless someone indicates that they want to watch it.

Great plugin, and thank you for your time.
Bad Sector // Sep 3, 2008 at 11:32 pm

is there any way to fast-start the movie? the quicktime logo appears until whole video file is being cached, so this takes years and years. any suggestions?
KitKat // Aug 7, 2008 at 6:57 am

Is the last version 0.2 compatible with Wordpress 2.6?

Thank!
Meldeine Sipes » Snapshots From My Childhood // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:40 am

[...] in the Adobe Design Center Video Workshop. Of course the next step was for me to figure out how to embed Quicktime movies on my blog. I am learning that I love Wordpress more and more as I use it and learn more [...]
Finding and watching embedded QuickTime « Digital Media // Jul 30, 2008 at 3:37 am

[...] handle the HD clips and kept pausing to buffer). I finally did find a neat blog post on how to embed QuickTime files with a WordPress plug-in. The video that was shown on the blog as a sample looked really clean and played right away. It was [...]
Pierre // Jun 7, 2008 at 2:50 pm

It doesn’t work for me on the iPhone. I loaded this page on the iPhone, scrolled to the 3rd video, clicked the link under “iPod version (2.7 MB)” but instead of showing the video, Safari displayed a white page with the binary contents of the video file.
AikoWorld // May 27, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Hi great plugin, thou i have problems with the auto caching, it caches even when i disabled the function in the php script.

Any suggestions?

related questions
http://www.aikoworld.com/blog/category/aiko-world-animations/
Mike // May 3, 2008 at 11:14 pm

This looks like a nice plugin. The problem is, I don’t have Wordpress, and I figure it is a Mac program, and I use a PC.

Could you please post on this page sample HTML code for the various attributes? (Of course one would have to substitute the location, title, and size of one’s own movie, for the one in your sample.) (Please include the noscript code, the info about downloading to Ipod, and how to have the QT icon say “Loading”, when the movie is loading.

Thank you.
Holly // May 2, 2008 at 7:23 pm

Hi there!

Love the plugin, and its working great for me for standard QT, but Im looking to embed a QT VR into my website. Everything so far has been working just fine, except that I can’t seem to get the controller to show. I suspect that this is because the controls for QT VR aren’t the same as a standard QT file. I’ve checked and rechecked all my settings, and everything looks right. Ideas?

Also, the pages that Im using this on also use Suckerfish for dropdown menus- but the menus come up behind the movie, making it kinda hard to navigate :( For the time being, I can adjust the design so they wont overlap, but I was wondering if there was a fix for this, or if thats just the nature of the beast.
Nathaniel Agnini // Apr 28, 2008 at 3:54 pm

I am having the hardest time with this. What exactly do I paste into my “code” tab under a wordpress post? I just can’t seem to get the movie to load or show up. I do have the generic quicktime logo, but no boundry box. I think I have the movie uploaded to my site appropriately. Any help would be very greatly appreciated.
Michael kelly // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:46 am

Hi

I reinstalled WP 2.3 and activated plugin but it now does not appear on write post page.any ideas

Mike
isotope // Apr 23, 2008 at 3:27 am

Hello…

i got some problems to embed a movie file.
which path is mean with qt:/moviefile?

for example…my video is in /wp-content/video/movie.mov
i´ll see the quicktime thumbnail, but no video is loaded…

can you tell how the plugin works right?

greets from germany!
Albo // Apr 19, 2008 at 4:46 pm

eyn,

How would I go about adding the “poster.mov”, to the RSS output. I know you stated that it should be text only, and I completely agree when using a .mov file, but since QuickTime has the ability to use a .jpg as the poster frame, I’d like to pass that through in the feed.

The “John Adams” post from this blog uses a .mp4 as the main movie and a .jpg as the poster frame, and it seems to work very well.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/04/18/john-adams-2008/

Is there a way I can do this?

Your plugin is great by the way, and it’s really a lifesaver for WordPress. I’m also experimenting with your Flash embed plug-in, and though I know it has the ability to play H.264 files now, it’s still not as reliable as the QuickTime plug-in, at least on a Mac.
Sample QuickTime Movie Post : Personal Reflections // Apr 19, 2008 at 12:06 am

[...] Instructions for coding QuickTime embedding. [...]
mike kelly // Apr 17, 2008 at 10:04 am

I upgraded to WP 2.5 your plugin is activated but does noe appeat in write post
is plugin compatable with 2.4
Tom Tomchak // Apr 13, 2008 at 2:19 pm

I’m having issues with the “play now” text showing up. I get the movie to load fine, as well as the poster frame, but there is no obvious indication that the user should click on the fame to play the video (if you do click, it works fine though).

What am I missing? I’ve read through the other questions and only see one post to this point, but with no answer given as to how it was solved.

Any help is appreciated. As much as I love your .flv plugin too, don’t give up on this one!
Ray // Apr 9, 2008 at 9:02 am

nevermind……

I’m an idiot
Ray // Apr 8, 2008 at 9:01 am

I am implementing the quicktime embed plugin on this page

http://www.skatedetroit.com/skateblog/

as you can see, the movie loads, but the javascript for the “click here to play” isn’t showing up

please advise me on what to change

your movies on this page work fine

thank you
ray
Ashley Starkey // Apr 6, 2008 at 7:53 pm

Thanks so much ern
As I said I’m a code novice but after a bit of tooing & froing (well quite a bit) and mainly following your helpful instructions I got a page happening with poster frames and all - very happy with the results http://www.video.starkeyzone.net/?page_id=2
I will return to donate.
Best Wishes,
Ashley
eyn // Apr 2, 2008 at 7:59 am

henri, you can’t use this plugin in the sidebar unfortunately. You could copy the source generated by this plugin and paste them into your sidebar if you wished, it should work that way.

Stephen, I think that problem has been brought up before, I will try to add a FAQs section listing all these problem and their solutions.

Heather, QuickTime does support looping, I will consider adding that parameter in the next version.

Ashley, since you have the poster in the same folder as the movie and you appended “_poster” to the poster filename, you should set “$qt_autoposter = 1;” and try this tag instead:

[qt:http://video.starkeyzone.net/Balfours.mov 320 240]

Make sure your “$qt_posterpath = "";” i.e. empty between the quotes and “$qt_useposter = 1;” to enable poster feature.
Ashley Starkey // Apr 2, 2008 at 3:17 am

I’m changing the above website to wordpress & your quicktime plug in is really excellent but I’m having with the poster frame. I’m a code novice.
I’ve got this
[qt:http://www.video.starkeyzone.net/Balfours.mov320 240 http://www.video.starkeyzone.net/Balfours_poster.mov 320 240]

I don’t have the poster in a specific directory - - it’s in the main folder next to the video itself.
I checked the php file & the $qt_posterpath seems to be set to 1
Any tip or pointer would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Ashley
Heather // Mar 31, 2008 at 12:43 pm

I really appreciate having this plug-in - THANKS! I am posting a cycled animation on my blog and would LOVE it if I could get my .qt to loop….any ideas or help?
Embed Quicktime Movies into Wordpress Blog « WebNex // Mar 27, 2008 at 12:59 am

[...] site that developed a Plug In that allows you to embed Quicktime movies into your Wordpress posts. Channel-Ai’s plugin has a couple different cool features that allow you to display the movie and controls in a [...]
Stephen Pickering // Mar 19, 2008 at 4:16 pm

Found my problem. My movie was rendered 480×285, and I had the settings like up there: 480×240. Duh! Now everything’s fine. Got the controls now. Thanks so much. Sometimes it takes asking a question to get it answered even if its you’re own mind that goes to work on the problem.
Stephen Pickering // Mar 18, 2008 at 6:43 pm

No, even when I removed the spaces, still no controls. Any thoughts? You can see: http://PickeringHome.com
Stephen Pickering // Mar 18, 2008 at 6:36 pm

OK, I found part of the problem. My extension had spaces in it that the web filled up with %, that when I added now shows the movie, but there’s still no controls. I have to double click the image to make the movie go, and click it to stop. I guess I shouldn’t make movies with spaces in the extensions? I didn’t think I did when I made the movie. But now I don’t remember. Hmmmm
Stephen Pickering // Mar 18, 2008 at 6:24 pm

I’m having trouble making it work. I uploaded everything, and wrote the code correctly. But all I get in the post is a big symbol of Quicktime. I have QT and Java enabled. Any help?

Thanks,
Stephen
henri // Mar 13, 2008 at 2:24 pm

any idea for using the plugin in the sidebar of the blog? thanks
Show Reel 2008 | pezmaz.com // Mar 12, 2008 at 8:02 pm

[...] a montage of clips from various projects both professional and recreational. I found a great wordpress plugin that does all the difficult embedding so you don’t have to. [ Javascript required to view [...]
eyn // Mar 3, 2008 at 12:08 am

QuickTime Embed 0.2 has just been released. I didn’t do a very thorough testing of it so if you find any bug just let me know. I added some new features that I already implemented in my FLV Embed plugin, such as movie path and poster path.

I’m sorry that this plugin hasn’t been updated for such a long time. Overall it’s working just fine for most cases. Since FLV has been gaining such huge momentum, I’ve stopped working with QuickTime despite the superior image quality and smaller size of h.264 compared to FLV. fyi, the latest version of Flash 9 can already play h.264 encoded movie so I believe there will be even one less reason to use QuickTime, sadly. Apple hasn’t done a good job promoting the adoption of QuickTime and to be honest, QuickTime is a pretty bad player that is buggy and slow, especially the h.264 encoder.

With that said, I’m updating this plugin for those people who stumble upon this page looking for QuickTime resources and those who commented to complement or giving suggestion to this plugin. I hope this plugin will continue to work nicely for those folks who choose QuickTime over other media.
Links | .:|randgaenge|:. // Mar 1, 2008 at 8:31 pm

[...] QuickTime Embed - Tags:quicktime wordpress plugins [...]
charlie // Mar 1, 2008 at 10:29 am

hi,
this is a great plugin. i’m having problems w posters in Safari though. They are not loading, and Im getting a vertical black column (like the window has been squished) and then some code in it. Looks fine in firefox. Your posters look fine in Safari so I am either forgetting something, or doing something wrong. Any suggestions? Thanks!
SemiProBlogging : How to embed QuickTime video’s into your WordPress Blog // Feb 26, 2008 at 10:04 pm

[...] If you are able to produce your video in QuickTime, you can embed them in your posts with the QuickTime Embed plugin by Yaosan [...]
*DaydreamNation » QT plugin test // Feb 26, 2008 at 8:36 am

[...] het embed tag gebruikte kreeg ik meldingen van crashende PC’s. Hopelijk werkt het met deze QuickTime Embed plugin wel een beetje. Geef me een seintje als er nog steeds PC’s vastlopen op deze [...]
links for 2008-02-26 « 语虚 // Feb 26, 2008 at 2:17 am

[...] 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. (tags: video Blog) [...]
hello/bye » Things To Do // Feb 16, 2008 at 5:41 am

[...] ¶ Quicktime Embed Script [...]
Laurent // Feb 2, 2008 at 11:44 pm

Hi, having issues with the latest version while the previous version worked like a charm. It’s acting weird on some quicktime projects of mine, namely the controller disappears and the quicktime gets streched out of proportion, while on other problems with the same format and syntax the controller appears and they keep their ratio.

I’m thinking about downgrading to version 0.1 which worked great but I can’t find a copy.

Example of a properly formatted image: http://www.laurentking.com/commercial/aids/

Example of a stretched image that used to play in the proper format:
http://www.laurentking.com/music-video/idiotheque/

Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance,
_laurent
Area 77 | Paul McCartney Apple Ad // Jan 24, 2008 at 6:55 pm

[...] found this cool plugin called QuickTime Embed and I’m testing it out. It basically makes it easier to embed QuickTime movies. No more messy [...]
Albo // Jan 23, 2008 at 4:53 pm

@Daniel

Your movies need to be “fast-start” enabled, in order to begin playing as they progressively download. It’s an easy fix however.

Open said movie in QuickTime player and choose “Save As…” from the File menu. Then select “Save as a self-contained movie”. This will make a new copy of the file, and automatically add the fast-start info needed.
Daniel // Jan 23, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Is there a way to have the QuickTime player pull up from the beginning, before the video loads, so that the user can see the progress of how quickly the video is loading?

Right now when you go to my site you just see a QuickTime “Q” for about three minutes and then once the video has loaded the player appears.

Any suggestions?
Albo // Jan 22, 2008 at 9:48 am

Here’s another QuickTime embed option for interested parties: mobvcasting