showing video on a static web page

Question

I have a static web site that need to display a video. I do not control the server (but know the guy who does). Is there any "host some files and add some boilerplate" ways to display the video as part of the page? I'm thinking of something that would look like an embedded youtube video.

I'd rather keep stuff local (I don't have a youtube account and have no other reason to get one) but if this would be much more than trivial, I'll let someone host it rather than messing around.

Answer 1

Convert your video to FLV (I use Avidemux but many tools are available) then use any embedded Flash Video player. See eg. http://osflv.com/, http://flowplayer.org/.

Answer 2

Embedding Windows Media Player is a piece of cake (see bottom of the page) and with the right background image can look like Youtube. Feel free to scrape my code.

Edit by BCS: His code

<object id="MediaPlayer" width="165" height="170"
  type="application/x-oleobject" 
  standby="Loading Microsoft Windows Media Player components..." 
  codebase="http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab#Version=9"
  classid="CLSID:22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95">

   <PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="vienna.wmv">
   <PARAM NAME="TransparentAtStart" Value="true">
   <PARAM NAME="AutoStart" Value="false">
   <PARAM NAME="AnimationatStart"   Value="true">
   <PARAM NAME="ShowControls" Value="true">
   <PARAM NAME="autoSize" Value="false">
   <PARAM NAME="displaySize" Value="0">
   <EMBED TYPE="application/x-mplayer2"
      pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/"
      src="vienna.wmv"
      Name=MediaPlayer AutoStart=0
      Width=165 Height=170
      transparentAtStart=1
      autostart=0
      animationAtStart=1
      ShowControls=1 
      autoSize=0 
      displaySize=0>
   </EMBED>
</OBJECT>

Equally old, here is an example of how to handle different bit rates. I know, I am a terrible actor.

I would use Youtube today, which I don't think existed when I put these pages up.

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