Embedding Windows Media Player for all browsers

Question

Edit  This question was written in 2008  which was like 3 internet ages ago  If this question is still relevant to your environment  please accept my condolences  Everyone else should convert into a format supported by your browsers  That would be H 264 if Internet Explorer is needed  and probably AV1  VP8 VP9 if not  and use the  lt video gt  element   We are using WMV videos on an internal site  and we are embedding them into web sites  This works quite well on Internet Explorer  but not on Firefox  I ve found ways to make it work in Firefox  but then it stops working in Internet Explorer  We do not want to use Silverlight just yet  especially since we cannot be sure that all clients will be running Windows XP with Windows Media Player installed  Is there some sort of Universal Code that embeds WMP into both Internet Explorer and Firefox  or do we need to implement some user-agent-detection and deliver different HTML for different browsers

User · Answer

Encoding flash video is actually very easy with ffmpeg. You can use one command to convert from just about any video format, ffmpeg is smart enough to figure the rest out, and it'll use every processor on your machine. Invoking it is easy:

ffmpeg -i input.avi output.flv

ffmpeg will guess at the bitrate you want, but if you'd like to specify one, you can use the -b option, so -b 500000 is 500kbps for example. There's a ton of options of course, but I generally get good results without much tinkering. This is a good place to start if you're looking for more options: video options.

You don't need a special web server to show flash video. I've done just fine by simply pushing .flv files up to a standard web server, and linking to them with a good swf player, like flowplayer.

WMVs are fine if you can be sure that all of your users will always use [a recent, up to date version of] Windows only, but even then, Flash is often a better fit for the web. The player is even extremely skinnable and can be controlled with javascript.

User · Answer

May I suggest the jQuery Media Plugin  Provides embed code for all kinds of video  not just WMV and does browser detection  keeping all that messy switch case statements out of your templates

User · Answer

You could use conditional comments to get IE and Firefox to do different things   lt   if  IE  gt   lt p gt  Firefox only code lt  p gt   lt   endif  gt    lt  -- if IE  gt   lt p gt Internet Explorer only code lt  p gt   lt   endif -- gt    The browsers themselves will ignore code that isn t meant for them to read

User · Answer

December 2020    We have now Firefox 83 0 and Chrome 87 0 Internet Explorer is dead  it has been replaced by the new Chromium-based Edge 87 0 Silverlight is dead Windows XP is dead WMV is not a standard   https   www w3schools com html html media asp  To answer the question    You have to convert your WMV file to another format   MP4  WebM or Ogg video  Then embed it in your page with the HTML 5  lt video gt  element   I think this question should be closed

User · Answer

I have found something that Actually works in both FireFox and IE  on Elizabeth Castro s site  thanks to the link on this site  - I have tried all other versions here  but could not make them work in both the browsers   lt object classid  CLSID 6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6     id  player  width  320  height  260  gt     lt param name  url       value  http   www sarahsnotecards com catalunyalive fishstore wmv    gt     lt param name  src       value  http   www sarahsnotecards com catalunyalive fishstore wmv    gt     lt param name  showcontrols  value  true    gt     lt param name  autostart  value  true    gt     lt  -- if  IE  gt -- gt     lt object type  video x-ms-wmv       data  http   www sarahsnotecards com catalunyalive fishstore wmv       width  320  height  260  gt       lt param name  src         value  http   www sarahsnotecards com catalunyalive fishstore wmv    gt       lt param name  autostart  value  true    gt       lt param name  controller  value  true    gt     lt  object gt     lt  -- lt   endif -- gt   lt  object gt    Check her site out  http   www alistapart com articles byebyeembed  and the version with the classid in the initial object tag

User · Answer

The following works for me in Firefox and Internet Explorer    lt object id  mediaplayer  classid  clsid 22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95  codebase  http   activex microsoft com activex controls mplayer en nsmp2inf cab version 5 1 52 701  standby  loading microsoft windows media player components     type  application x-oleobject  width  320  height  310  gt   lt param name  filename  value    test wmv  gt        lt param name  animationatstart  value  true  gt        lt param name  transparentatstart  value  true  gt        lt param name  autostart  value  true  gt        lt param name  showcontrols  value  true  gt        lt param name  ShowStatusBar  value  true  gt        lt param name  windowlessvideo  value  true  gt        lt embed src    test wmv  autostart  true  showcontrols  true  showstatusbar  1  bgcolor  white  width  320  height  310  gt   lt  object gt

User · Answer

Use the following  It works in Firefox and Internet Explorer            lt object id  MediaPlayer1  width  690  height  500  classid  CLSID 22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95              codebase  http   activex microsoft com activex controls mplayer en nsmp2inf cab Version 5 1 52 701              standby  Loading Microsoft   Windows   Media Player components     type  application x-oleobject               gt               lt param name  FileName  value   lt    GetSource     gt     gt               lt param name  AutoStart  value  True    gt               lt param name  DefaultFrame  value  mainFrame    gt               lt param name  ShowStatusBar  value  0    gt               lt param name  ShowPositionControls  value  0    gt               lt param name  showcontrols  value  0    gt               lt param name  ShowAudioControls  value  0    gt               lt param name  ShowTracker  value  0    gt               lt param name  EnablePositionControls  value  0    gt                 lt  -- BEGIN PLUG-IN HTML FOR FIREFOX-- gt               lt embed  type  application x-mplayer2  pluginspage  http   www microsoft com Windows MediaPlayer                   src   lt    GetSource     gt   align  middle  width  600  height  500  defaultframe  rightFrame                   id  MediaPlayer2    gt    And in JavaScript       function playVideo             try                  if -1    navigator userAgent indexOf  MSIE                                              var obj   document getElementById  MediaPlayer1                                obj Play                                       else                                               var player   document getElementById  MediaPlayer2                                player controls play                                                catch error                alert error

User · Answer

The best way to deploy video on the web is using Flash - it s much easier to embed cleanly into a web page and will play on more or less any browser and platform combination  The only reason to use Windows Media Player is if you re streaming content and you need extraordinarily strong digital rights management  and even then providers are now starting to use Flash even for these  See BBC s iPlayer for a superb example   I would suggest that you switch to Flash even for internal use  You never know who is going to need to access it in the future  and this will give you the best possible future compatibility   EDIT - March 20 2013   Interesting how these old questions resurface from time to time  How different the world is today and how dated this all seems  I would not recommend a Flash only route today by any means - best practice these days would probably be to use HTML 5 to embed H264 encoded video  with a Flash fallback as described here  http   diveintohtml5 info video html

User · Answer

Elizabeth Castro has an interesting article on this problem  Bye Bye Embed   Worth a read on how she attacked this problem  as well as handling QuickTime content

User · Answer

I found a good article about using the WMP with Firefox on MSDN   Based on MSDN s article and after doing some trials and errors  I found using JavaScript is better than using conditional comments or nested  EMBED OBJECT  tags   I made a JS function that generate WMP object based on given arguments    lt script type  text javascript  gt      function generateWindowsMediaPlayer          holderId       String         height         Number         width          Number         videoUrl       String            you can declare more arguments for more flexibility                     var holder   document getElementById holderId            var player     lt object            player     height      height toString                   player     width      width toString                    videoUrl   encodeURI videoUrl      Encode for special characters          if  navigator userAgent indexOf  MSIE    lt  0                   Chrome  Firefox  Opera  Safari               player     type  application x-ms-wmp       Old Edition             player     type  video x-ms-wmp       New Edition  suggested by MNRSullivan  Read Comments              player     data      videoUrl       gt                      else                  Internet Explorer             player     classid  clsid 6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6   gt                player      lt param name  url  value      videoUrl        gt                       player      lt param name  autoStart  value  false    gt            player      lt param name  playCount  value  1    gt            player      lt  object gt             holder innerHTML   player         lt  script gt    Then I used that function by writing some markups and inline JS like these    lt div id  wmpHolder  gt  lt  div gt    lt script type  text javascript  gt              window addEventListener  load   generateWindowsMediaPlayer  wmpHolder   240  320   http   mysite com path video ext      lt  script gt    You can use jQuery ready instead of window load event to making the codes more backward-compatible and cross-browser   I tested the codes over IE 9-10  Chrome 27  Firefox 21  Opera 12 and Safari 5  on Windows 7 8

[windows] Embedding Windows Media Player for all browsers

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