This is more strictly an HTML problem, but as I'm also using PHP and the
HTML groups seem to be infested with spam, I'm posting it here!

At the school where I work I've got an online searchable database of
video tapes and dvds, using MySql and PHP on a Linux machine. It works
fine. I'm trancoding some of the tapes to avi files, which can be
accessed as a samba share. I'd like to put clickable links into the
database, so if a user sees the file is coloured blue, they can click it
and it plays. I've got it working, but:

Using a 'href' link in HTML code of the PHP powered web page, the file
is downloaded at the user end completely before it starts playing, which
results in an unacceptably long delay. But if a user accesses the file
directly using the samba share directory, the video starts almost
immediately and 'streams'.

How can I embed into my PHP powered web page a link that uses samba file
sharing, so it streams, please?

Jim Ford

Jim Ford wrote:
[..]
> Using a 'href' link in HTML code of the PHP powered web page, the file
> is downloaded at the user end completely before it starts playing, which
> results in an unacceptably long delay. But if a user accesses the file
> directly using the samba share directory, the video starts almost
> immediately and 'streams'.
>
> How can I embed into my PHP powered web page a link that uses samba file
> sharing, so it streams, please?
>
> Jim Ford

Jim,

You really need to ask this in an html group. You'll get better answers
there, spam or not.

Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> Jim Ford wrote:
>
> Jim,
>
> You really need to ask this in an html group. You'll get better answers
> there, spam or not.
>

You don't want to be using an href. Try looking up OBJECT / EMBED tags
and embed the data in the web page inline. The OBJECT/EMBED parameters
will be different depending on what you're embedding.

Flash Video is quite popular (like on YouTube), if you decide to go that
route:

You can find free embeddable Flash video players on the web, have a look
at this tutorial if you decide to go the Flash Movie way:

http://granades.com/2006/09/14/how-t...ny-easy-steps/

There seems to be a nice link to a free Flash Video encoder which will
transform your AVI's here (we have full version of flash here so I
haven't used that but looks good):

http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?encoder&L=3

Tyno Gendo wrote:

> You don't want to be using an href. Try looking up OBJECT / EMBED tags
> and embed the data in the web page inline. The OBJECT/EMBED parameters
> will be different depending on what you're embedding.

Thanks a lot Tyno, I'll follow up what you suggest.

Thanks again for putting me on the right path!

Jim Ford