Software
Getting MPEG files to auto-stream in QuickTime
Is there a way to publish MPEG-4 files to the Web so they will open using Fast Start streaming in QuickTime when a user clicks on the link for the *.mp4 file?
I have yet to find a consistent way to create Fast Start streaming with raw MP4 files in QuickTime, other than serving them using real-time streaming protocols.
Setting the Web server Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions type for MP4 to be video/mp4 doesn't seem to be sufficient to guarantee that all QuickTime clients will use progressive download to play the movie as a stream instead of downloading the whole file first. If you can create a Web page for each MP4 file, then you can force Web browsers (with properly installed QuickTime plug-ins) to automatically play the file. To do this, use OBJECT and EMBED markup tags to embed the call to play the video in the Web page. Here's a code example:
<OBJECT CLASSID="object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" height="16" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"
width="0">
<embed autoplay="false" controller="false" height="16" href="http://MYSERVER:80/MYPATH/MYFILE_i.png" target="quicktimeplayer"
type="video/quicktime" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">
</embed>
</object>
You also can try QuickTime Pro or use iTunes to open and then re-export the MP4 files with the Fast Start option enabled, so the QuickTime client recognizes what it's supposed to do.
If you are going to open and resave the files, you might prefer to convert them to QuickTime movie files with the .mov extension. If you choose to convert file formats, look at using the open source Darwin Streaming Server or the QuickTime Streaming Server instead.
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