Note: This web page is HTML 4.01 strict compliant.

What I would like to be able to do is get web pages with H.264 encoded movie clips (.MP4, Adobe uses .F4V) to play on a regular windows type machine.
Of course, this stuff just works on MAC's. It also works on windows machines that have Apple Quicktime player installed, which I do not think is a high percentage.

Over the years, internet browsers have changed in how, and even if, they support the HTML EMBED and OBJECT tags. Most examples of code that one can find are actually obsolete and/or contain uneeded HTML code, nor would pass the W3C validator. For example, most HTML code that I found uses both EMBED and OBJECT tags, whereas as I think only one is needed to achieve the proper user experience.
Note that while it is easy to use, according to W3C, the EMBED tag is obsolete and should never be used. No web page that uses the EMBED tag will pass any level of W3C validation.

Autostart is worth a special note. It pretty much does not work as per many examples that one can find, including as a "PARAM" line in the OBJECT method or as a seperate entry in the EMBED method. The only way I found it to work properly was as an & on the flashvars statement (view source on the below links to see an example. But also note that if you want your code to be W3C compliant & should be used instead of just &, even within quotes).

Now, autostart does not quarantee that the video clip will play while downloading, also known as progressive download. It turns out that one can not make a .mp4 highly compressed file from iMovie or Quicktime that will play while downloading or do progressive download. It is easy with the 9 times worse compression stuff, but that kind of defeats what I wanted to be able to do. No matter what options one selects, the MOOV Atom (new lingo to me. The "chunk" or "Block" that is needed to be able index into and play or jump ahead or whatever.) is output at the end of the file, so the entire download is required before it can be played. However, there is a tool called qt-faststart that will move the MOOV Atom to the start of the file. One can find qt-faststart.c on internet and compile it and get a problematic program that will crash and not work. qt-faststart.c is also included as a tool in ffmpeg. Even though the qt-faststart.c code is still called version 0.1 it has differences from the crash type version. If one compiles ffmpeg first (took hours on my linux box and had zillions of warnings), then compiles qt-faststart it seems to work properly. Once one post processes their .mp4 file with qtfaststart.c, it will play while downloading, or will progressive download.

I am just trying / testing different things herein, and mainly learning how to use the Adobe (Macromedia) Flash player. To be able to actually "play" a video using the Flash player, a flash object (.swf) is required. At first, such a requirement was not obvious to me as I had only used plug-ins (such as Quicktime and Windows Media Player) that provided the screen and buttons I/F themselves. Herein, I use the well known JW player (player.swf) (free for non-commercial use), available from Longtail. If a new enough version of Adobe flash is used, it has an H.264 decoder built in. It is my understanding that the Adobe Flash player, or some equivalent, is installed on over 95% of computers. While one can find examples, even on the Adobe site, of 'codebase="http://download.adobe.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=10,0,22,87"' on the OBJECT tag line, as of writing this web page that URL does not exsist (for any version that I tried). I had to change all of mine to 'codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=10,0,22,87"'

Note that several browsers do not seem to deal with the Flash version check and option to upgrade very well, if at all. One is left wondering why it doesn't seem to be working with no feedback that it is a version problem. Use this link to check which version of Adobe Flash you have.

The below simple HREF link will work if you have Apple quicktime player installed on your windows computer, otherwise no (unless you have some other program associated with the .mp4 file extention) (This is the highly efficient H.264 coded version):
Simple HREF link to a .mp4 version (H.264) 5.02 Megabytes.

Now I will try to create links to HTML pages that will try to force the use of the Adobe (MacroMedia) Flash Player to play the .mp4 version of the file.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works on Opera; (Use of the EMBED tag is not W3C compliant):
Link to HTML file that uses OBJECT and EMBED HTML Tags to force the use of the Flash Player to show the clip as an .f4v file.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works on Opera; (Use of the EMBED tag is not W3C compliant):
Link to HTML file that uses OBJECT and EMBED HTML Tags to force the use of the Flash Player to show the clip as an .mp4 file.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works on Opera; (Use of the EMBED tag is not W3C compliant):
Link to HTML file that uses only one simple EMBED HTML Tag to force the use of the Flash Player to show the clip.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works on Opera; W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant:
Link to HTML file that uses only an OBJECT HTML Tag to force the use of the Flash Player to show the clip.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works on Opera; W3C HTML 4.01 Strict compliant:
Link to HTML file that uses only an OBJECT HTML Tag to force the use of the Flash Player to show the clip.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works on Opera; W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant:
Link to HTML file that uses only an OBJECT HTML Tag to force the use of the Flash Player to show the clip.

Works on I.E.; Works on Safari; Works on Firefox; Works with warnings on Opera:
Link to HTML file that uses the Java script method to use the Flash Player (V1.5 of swfobject.js).

Does NOT work on I.E.; Does NOT work on Safari; Does NOT work on Firefox; Does NOT work on Opera:
Note: the syntax when using version 2 is different than for version 1.5. The below link is exactly the same HTML file, but it needs to be updated to use the new syntax (not done yet).
Link to HTML file that uses the Java script method to use the Flash Player (V2.0 of swfobject.js).

An html 5 version:
Link to HTML 5 file that just plays the video clip, without all the B.S.

Note: where is says "Works on" it should now say "Used to work on" for several cases.