Embedding QuickTime to Launch External Player

While it looks slick to publish your QuickTime movie embedded in a Web page, the size of the movie will potentially slow page load times. One way to get around this is to create a poster movie which launches the QuickTime player in the external QuickTime Player application when clicked. The image displays just like it would if you were embedding the movie to play in the browser, but you avoid the wait by keeping the file size smaller. Opening the QuickTime Player on the desktop also eliminates some of the confusion about how the player works.

Just like the example on embedding the QuickTime Player in your Web site or blog page, the code for launching the external player also gets pasted in the <body> of your page or blog post so it displays properly when you serve the video. There are two main differences for the code to launch QuickTime Player in an external browser. Notice this time, your src value has a href value, which tells the player to launch something else when clicked. The other change is the addition of a target value of quicktimeplayer which tells the embedded file to launch the external player when clicked.

This time around, we set the controller parameter to false so the play controls don't appear.

</object>

Here's an example of this code in action:

Click the image to play the movie

Like the standard example of embedding the player in a Web page, the classid and codebase information in the object parameter are required for compatibility with Internet Explorer and must be included for most viewers to see your video.