Getting a quicktime stream to open in quicktime, not browser

Question

Hi all,
I am trying to stream some quicktime videos (.mov, H.264) from my website. For the standard res. version, it is fine to have it play in the browser, but I would like to have the HD versions open up in quicktime player automatically, like the HD trailers do on apple's website. How would I go about doing this (I have little experience streaming videos).

Answer 1

The key is that you need a "poster movie" to embed into your web page. The poster movie can be anything that the QuickTime plug-in can display...a movie, a sound clip, or just a still image...even just a still image that looks like a PLAY button. The key is, it has to be a file that QuickTime can play, and you have to embed it into your web page.
In the embed code, you need to include an additional parameter, the HREF parameter, which includes the URL for your streaming movie. Then you also need to include in the HREF parameter the TARGET directive, with the target identified as <quicktimeplayer>.
So your embedded movie ought to look something like this:
<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
WIDTH="w%" HEIGHT="h%"
CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"
ID="movie1">
<PARAM name="SRC" VALUE="poster.mov">
<PARAM name="CONTROLLER" VALUE="false">
<PARAM name="HREF" VALUE="<rtsp://my.streaming.url> T<quicktimeplayer>"
<embed src="poster.mov"
width="w%"
height="h%"
controller="false"
name="movie1"
href="<rtsp://my.streaming.url> T<quicktimeplayer>"
pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime">
</embed>
</object>
Of course, substitute your height and width for h% and w%, and your poster movie name and stream protocol and url where appropriate. And you really should use a Javascript method to write this code into your page so that it will work in Internet Explorer.
The real key here is that no normal web link will fire off QuickTime Player. But if you embed a poster movie, then that movie will be displayed...and more important, a user's click will be interpreted by, not by the browser's rendering engine, but rather the QuickTime browser plug-in, which knows how to start QuickTime Player.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.