13 Replies Latest reply: Apr 11, 2012 12:47 AM by Cool Cat 77

Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Mar 19, 2012 4:00 AM

Hi Dreamweaver Folks,

I’m testing embedding movies to a webpage in Dreamweaver MX 2004. However, they don’t appear playable in the program or appear at all when I preview the page in browsers. Would be grateful of any advice as to what’s going wrong.

1. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

osgood_ Mar 19, 2012 4:04 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

What's the code you are using?

Better still could you upload one of the pages so someone can take a look and see what is going on?
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
2. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Mar 21, 2012 5:24 AM (in response to osgood_)

Thanks for the reply. Here's the code from the Dreamweaver page...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="32" height="32">
<param name="movie" value="../../Steele%20of%20the%20Whores%2001/Test%20Vid%20Titles%20(for%20tweaking).avi">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<embed src="../../Steele%20of%20the%20Whores%2001/Test%20Vid%20Titles%20(for%20tweaking).avi" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="32" height="32"></embed>
</object>
</body>
</html>
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
3. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

adninjastrator Mar 21, 2012 5:32 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

Most likely the problems are the file/folder names:
<param name="movie" value="../../Steele%20of%20the%20Whores%2001/Test%20Vid%20Titles%20(f or%20tweaking).avi">

I would suggest that you standardize file and folder names using these basic rules:
Use only lower case letters for file and folder names
No spaces_use_underscores_instead.
and of course no special characters like this:
(f or%20tweaking)
Get the file/folder names corrected first and then see if the ../../ part of the path is actually needed.
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
4. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Mar 21, 2012 5:53 AM (in response to adninjastrator)

Hi. Cheers for the pointers.

Just had a try with a different clip which has underscores in the spaces and no special characters in its title. Afraid that didn't function either. Might it be something to do with the version of Dreamweaver or Flash or the spec of my computer (a desktop PC from 2005) or something? It took about 5 minutes of whirring for the preview in Internet Explorer (a blank page with no resulting movie to click on) to load, for example.
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
5. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

adninjastrator Mar 21, 2012 6:04 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

Nothing to do with Dreamweaver or your computer...
The last file you tried to play was an .avi file..
What is the video file type you are now trying to play? the embedding code will vary depending on the file type.
The first file... the .avi... looked like you were using a Flash player... which of course would not work.
Adninjastrator
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
6. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Mar 21, 2012 6:13 AM (in response to adninjastrator)

Ah, right. The second file type was also .avi. Do Flash players not play .avi movies? If so, which format would you recommend I convert to?
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
7. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

adninjastrator Mar 21, 2012 6:42 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

Convert the .avi to .flv.
I'm not sure if MX came with the Flash Media Encoder... I know that Flash 8 and onward do. This is the conversion method I use and would suggest.
You may need to research more on Flash Media Encoder which may/may not have come bundled with MX. Does this help?
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/779079
Adninjastrator
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
8. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Mar 26, 2012 5:41 AM (in response to adninjastrator)

I'm not particularly technically minded so it all helps

Tried converting to .flv to no avail. The site folder (i.e: not the video file) contains spaces as opposed to underscoring. Might that potentially be the issue?

Will look into the version of Flash I have and whether it features the Media Encoder.
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
9. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

adninjastrator Mar 26, 2012 6:54 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

As a general rule, all folder and file names should be all lower case and contain no spaces or special punctuation characters.
You tried converting to .flv? How... and what happened?
In the long run, link to the actual on-line page will be the best way to get help.
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
10. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Mar 27, 2012 3:45 AM (in response to adninjastrator)

Managed the.flv conversion fine with Format Factory, but still encountered the same broken link problem with this format in Dreamweaver. Might have to initially have people click on a word to go to a movie on the streaming site instead of embedding the movie on my website and them just pressing 'Play'.

Checked programs. Adobe Flash Player 11 Activex and Adobe Flash Player 11 Plugin are listed.
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
11. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

adninjastrator Mar 27, 2012 7:30 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

There's really no reason that you can't get this working on your own site.
For testing purposes, start a completly new HTML doc.
Copy/paste this code directly into "Code" view... over the top of any existing code.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<object data="path_to_file/file.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="insert_width_of_movie" height="insert_height_of_movie">
<param name="movie" value="path_to_file/file.swf">
<param name="SomeOtherParam" value="ParamValue">
</object>
</body>
</html>
Save as "vid_test" in the same folder as the .swf and the .flv. Then again working in Code view, edit the <object> data to correctly reflect the name of your .swf file. You can delete the
<param name="SomeOtherParam" value="ParamValue">
if you don't need it.
Keep everything in the same folder until you get this worked out. Later you can alter the location and paths when you understand how that all works.
Give that a shot.
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
12. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Apr 2, 2012 1:48 PM (in response to adninjastrator)

Okay, mate. Will give this a whirl to the best of my ability and report back later in the week.
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions
13. Re: Difficulty Viewing Embedded Movies (DW MX 2004)

Cool Cat 77 Apr 11, 2012 12:47 AM (in response to Cool Cat 77)

Hello again,

Gave it a whirl to no avail. Thought it might be something to do with elements of Flash being missing so also tried reinstalling from the original MX CD-Rom. No change, though. Oh, well. Thanks for your assistance anyhow. It's something I'll have to return to and sort after a break. Will definitely have to embed videos from YouTube as opposed to streaming them using a dedicated server due to costs.
Like Show 0 Likes (0)

Actions