I am about to add a video clip to my web site of the recent Gardeners world
clip, I already have an older clip on there, both work fine on my computer -
But! I now have an Android tablet and I thought I would check it wasn't to
big a file for that, only to discover that both clips old and new cause the
tablet to go crazy opening hundreds of blank web pages. I don't want to be
annoying a lot of phone and tablet users (no one has ever said anything) I
am presuming I need to publish the video clips in a different format but
which one? and how best to go about it?

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
Holders of National Collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cvs
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk

On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:58:55 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

I am about to add a video clip to my web site of the recent Gardeners
world clip, I already have an older clip on there, both work fine on my
computer -
But! I now have an Android tablet and I thought I would check it wasn't
to big a file for that, only to discover that both clips old and new
cause the tablet to go crazy opening hundreds of blank web pages. I
don't want to be annoying a lot of phone and tablet users (no one has
ever said anything) I am presuming I need to publish the video clips in
a different format but which one? and how best to go about it?

To answer the last question, upgrade (if you haven't already) to HTML5 and
just use the video tag.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_video.asp

you'll need a .mp4 and a .ogg version for each video to cover all
browsers. No need for plugins. As Peter Kay would say 'it's the future!'.

On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:58:55 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

I don't want to be annoying a lot of phone and tablet users (no one has
ever said anything) I am presuming I need to publish the video clips in
a different format but which one? and how best to go about it?

div align="left"
See video clip from a href="Gorgeous%20Gardens_0003.wmv"
Westcountry
TV's Gorgeous/a Gardens
/div

You are just giving a link to the file, it's then up to the browser
to handle it. That might require the whole thing to be downloaded
before it starts playing, rather than just streaming it.

Video is not something I have dabbled with but the key words for
google are likely to be "embed video web page" sort of thing.

My Android tablet and default browser just offers me the choice to
download the video. 17 MB took a while to come down but played OK
once downloaded but not automagically or starting playing a second or
three after clicking on it like most other sites that stream their
content do.

I believe HTML5 and modern browsers made embeding content a lot
easier than it used to be. IIRC a HTML5 browser can play video
natively, ie without a "plug-in", just needs to be the right format.
GIYF again...

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:58:55 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

I don't want to be annoying a lot of phone and tablet users (no one has
ever said anything) I am presuming I need to publish the video clips in
a different format but which one? and how best to go about it?

div align="left"
See video clip from a href="Gorgeous%20Gardens_0003.wmv"
Westcountry
TV's Gorgeous/a Gardens
/div

You are just giving a link to the file, it's then up to the browser
to handle it. That might require the whole thing to be downloaded
before it starts playing, rather than just streaming it.

Video is not something I have dabbled with but the key words for
google are likely to be "embed video web page" sort of thing.

My Android tablet and default browser just offers me the choice to
download the video. 17 MB took a while to come down but played OK
once downloaded but not automagically or starting playing a second or
three after clicking on it like most other sites that stream their
content do.

I believe HTML5 and modern browsers made embeding content a lot
easier than it used to be. IIRC a HTML5 browser can play video
natively, ie without a "plug-in", just needs to be the right format.
GIYF again...

--
Cheers
Dave.

Derek/Dave thanks for the replies, not sure whether you mean that I need to
change the video file or that the tablet I was using needs a better web
browser?


--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
Holders of National Collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cvs
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk

On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 18:01:04 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

Derek/Dave thanks for the replies, not sure whether you mean that I need
to change the video file or that the tablet I was using needs a better
web browser?

Change the code to be HTML5 (at least for that bit), "Microsoft
FrontPage 4.0" isn't setting what version of HTML the file is anyway.
You'll probably have to edit the HTML directly and I don't know if
Frontpage will "helpfully" mangle any code you enter to what it
thinks it ought to be.

As Derek said the file will then need to be in one of the natively
supported video formats. After that it should "just work" on anything
recent.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 17:36:44 +0100, Dave Liquorice wrote:

See video clip from a href="Gorgeous%20Gardens_0003.wmv"

Whatever you do pls don't use a wmv file. Even a mac needs a special
plugin to read these (or used to, but I think the wife still has one on
hers). And those of use using various linuxes ignore these files
completely. mp4 is pretty good for everyone IIRC (not an expert in the
area).



--
Gardening in Lower Normandy

On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 18:20:26 +0100, Dave Liquorice wrote:

As Derek said the file will then need to be in one of the natively
supported video formats.

Actually, what Derek said was that the file needs to be in BOTH of the
natively-supported formats eg.

video width="320" height="240" controls
source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4"
source src="movie.ogg" type="video/ogg"
Your browser does not support the video tag.
/video

That way, the browser will play whichever of the formats it supports. If
it supports neither then the text message is displayed.

By the way, FrontPage is the work of the Devil (well, Microsoft, and
that's as near as damn it). AFAIK it has never produced a line of
standards-compliant code. Even Mickey$oft have washed their hands of it.
If you must use a wysiwyg editor (and I'd suggest you don't) then the only
one I'd recommend at present is Blue Griffon, for no other reason than it
supports HTML5, which most of the others haven't caught up with yet. Oh
and it's free and open-source

On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 09:09:30 +0200, Martin wrote:

Whatever you do pls don't use a wmv file. Even a mac needs a
special
plugin to read these ...

OTOH the vast majority use Windows :-)

If Charlie still has the broadcast resolution file file I think it
would be advantageus to have at least an MP4(*) encoded with a modern
coder (H268? if that is what HTML5 browsers understand). One thing
that struck me about the current clip, is the quality, it's not very
good for the size of the file. I think the resolution could be upped
a bit and a better codec used to bring the filesize down but retain
the quality.

(*) And OGG if you insist. You only *need* one and I suspect that MP4
will have wider support than OGG. Having both just covers more
browsers.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 09:09:30 +0200, Martin wrote:

Whatever you do pls don't use a wmv file. Even a mac needs a
special
plugin to read these ...

OTOH the vast majority use Windows :-)

If Charlie still has the broadcast resolution file file I think it
would be advantageus to have at least an MP4(*) encoded with a modern
coder (H268? if that is what HTML5 browsers understand). One thing
that struck me about the current clip, is the quality, it's not very
good for the size of the file. I think the resolution could be upped
a bit and a better codec used to bring the filesize down but retain
the quality.

(*) And OGG if you insist. You only *need* one and I suspect that MP4
will have wider support than OGG. Having both just covers more
browsers.

--
Cheers
Dave.

I do still have the original video for both clips, I have now changed the
clips on the web site to MP4 but sadly my Android tablet still doesn't like
them!

Changing the file format was easy and quick, I have looked at HTML5 but I am
not sure if/how I can change at least the home page over to that? You must
understand I am a bear of little brain and don't really want to spend hours
re doing 800 pages on my web site just so a couple of clips work. but if
there is a way I can re code the home page I will give that a go.

I am sure the un flattering comments about my old Frontpage program are
completely justified but it did the job at the time and was free as some
gave it to me when upgrading.


--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
Holders of National Collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cvs
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk

On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 14:08:46 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

Changing the file format was easy and quick, I have looked at HTML5 but
I am not sure if/how I can change at least the home page over to that?
You must understand I am a bear of little brain and don't really want to
spend hours re doing 800 pages on my web site just so a couple of clips
work. but if there is a way I can re code the home page I will give that
a go.

Depends what plain text editor you have, notepad will do. I'd play on
a test page to begin with, so as you are familiar with Frontpage
create a new blank page, with a bit of text like "Edit here", save
and then open it in notepad. Find the HTML5 code example posted
earlier and copy it into the file in notepad, where the text "Edit
here" appears, change the filenames etc to match your files. Save and
see what happens if you load that page into a browser. GIYF for help
on the tags used, http://www.w3schools.com is pretty good, well I
like it, "the try it yourself" feature is a quick way of tweaking
things and seeing their effect.

I am sure the un flattering comments about my old Frontpage program are
completely justified but it did the job at the time and was free as some
gave it to me when upgrading.

It does have a very poor reputation. tends to produce code that is
many times the size it needs to be, code that is non-standards
compliant, code that relys on certain Microsoft extensions that not
all Microsoft products supported. But this is a long time ago ...

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Derek Turner" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 26 Jun 2014 18:20:26 +0100, Dave Liquorice wrote:

As Derek said the file will then need to be in one of the natively
supported video formats.

Actually, what Derek said was that the file needs to be in BOTH of the
natively-supported formats eg.

video width="320" height="240" controls
source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4"
source src="movie.ogg" type="video/ogg"
Your browser does not support the video tag.
/video

That way, the browser will play whichever of the formats it supports. If
it supports neither then the text message is displayed.

By the way, FrontPage is the work of the Devil (well, Microsoft, and
that's as near as damn it). AFAIK it has never produced a line of
standards-compliant code. Even Mickey$oft have washed their hands of it.
If you must use a wysiwyg editor (and I'd suggest you don't) then the only
one I'd recommend at present is Blue Griffon, for no other reason than it
supports HTML5, which most of the others haven't caught up with yet. Oh
and it's free and open-source

I will have a go at this after the weekend, thank you.

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
Holders of National Collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cvs
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk

On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 14:08:46 +0100, Charlie Pridham wrote:

Changing the file format was easy and quick, I have looked at HTML5 but
I am not sure if/how I can change at least the home page over to that?
You must understand I am a bear of little brain and don't really want to
spend hours re doing 800 pages on my web site just so a couple of clips
work. but if there is a way I can re code the home page I will give that
a go.

As an experiment, you could try changing the first three lines of your
home page (the local copy, obviously) from:

html

head

(which it is at present, where no document type is declared and browsers
just have to guess) to

!DOCTYPE html
html
head

(which declares it HTML5) and see if it breaks anything! Then put in the
VIDEO tags as I suggested and see if that works.

Tidying it up properly to remove all the invalid (microsoft) values and
tags, and obsolete tags, and putting all the formatting into a cascading
style-sheet would be a much bigger undertaking. How about £10 a page?

On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:58:19 +0200, Martin wrote:


We tried two Android tablets, both had no problem downloading the mp4
file,
neither could play it.

That's funny, my daughter has an android tablet, she has no problem with
mp4 AFAIK.



--
Gardening in Lower Normandy

On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 12:14:53 +0200, Martin wrote:

Since then I have found an app on my tablet called not surprisingly
Video Player. It does play MP4 files.

She has a Galaxy note 10.1 IIRC. I asked, she can play flash but "had to
hack it" to make it work.



--
Gardening in Lower Normandy

On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 11:52:24 +0200, Martin wrote:

Android tablets don't have and can't have Flash, because Adobe no longer
support Android.

Mines does, there was a brief period after Adobe pulled the plug
withoout warning, when there was a download available from Playstore.
But that is no longer there AFAIK and support certainly isn't.


--
Cheers
Dave.