Media Plugin

Embed multimedia objects such as Flash or QuickTime in topics.

Uses the OBJECT html tag to embed arbitrary content into a page, with a particular bent towards media: common media formats are detected and some "agnostic best-guess" html is used (derived from that recommended by the plugin providers). However, any content can be embedded using the object tag: java, pdf, other html, svg, even images (although for the latter is of course no real reason to do so this way). The plugin uses generic syntax when it cannot detect the type of file being embedded.

The plugin stores a range of default values (defined here on this page) which allow you to specify a bare minimum of info in your markup and still get acceptable results (see Basic Usage below). These defaults can of course be overridden on a use-by-use basis.

Basic Usage

You could call the plugin as simply as:

%MEDIA{"SomeMovie.mov"}%

This will detect that the embedded file is a QuickTime and use "media-like" syntax (and pass the correct classid to IE - why it can't work out which plugin to use is a little beyond me). However, unlike an IMG tag, plugins do not autosize to their content, and the movie would display at the default size. You could use media of only one size site-wide and specify the dimensions as defaults, but realistically the minimum markup you need to embed things into your wiki pages is:

%MEDIA{"SomeMovie.swf" width="320" height="180"}%

Advanced Usage

A call to the MediaPlugin could get as complicated as:

%MEDIA{
src="SomeMovie.wmv"
width="320"
height="180"
controller="FALSE"
play="TRUE"
myparam1="3.1419"
myparam2="edinburgh"
}%

See for possible attributes below.

Note that MediaPlugin figures out the correct mime type parameter so that the correct plugin will be called to deal with that content.

Syntax

MediaPlugin supports arbitrary parameters. If you pass it cowtype="Jersey", it will passed on to the browser.

A few parameters are defined and get handled a little differently (they may be "translated" to a particular browser plugins syntax).

Parameter	Value	Description	Notes
"", src, data	URI or file name	The content to embed. Relative URIs are interpreted with respect to the codebase attribute if it is given.
width	Standard web measure (px, %, em)	Width of box holding content
height	Standard web measure (px, %, em)	Height of box holding content
controller	text boolean ("TRUE" or "FALSE")	Whether to display controls	automatically added
play	text boolean	whether to auto-play the content	Automatically added for QuickTime and Flash

Syntax for QuickTime mov

See Overview of Embed Tag Attributes for QuickTime.

Syntax for Flash swf

Pass Flash movie attributes within the %MEDIA{...}% accolades (all values within quotes). When a particular parameter is not specified, the default value will be used (see table below).

More information on Flash OBJECT and EMBED tag attributes (Adobe TechNote).

Syntax for generic objects

The attributes described at Syntax above is mostly all you need. For advanced usage see the table below.

Syntax for wmv

Sorry - I could not find any page for this.

Examples

wmv

%MEDIA{
"http://support.microsoft.com/support/mediaplayer/wmptest/samples/new/mediaexample.wmv"
height="240"
width="320"
}%

generates:

mov

%MEDIA{
"%ATTACHURL%/sample.mov"
height="180"
width="320"
}%

generates:

By default the controller is shown (unless attribute controller="false"), and the controller height (16px) is automatically added to the movie height.

swf

%MEDIA{
"%ATTACHURL%/sample.swf"
height="180"
width="320"
}%

generates:

swf with params

These are just a number of example parameters; not all are effective in this movie.

%MEDIA{
src="%ATTACHURL%/swf/ThumbController.swf"
width="430"
height="370"
bgcolor="#ffffff"
menu="false"
base="%ATTACHURL%/swf/"
}%

generates:

Flash from other sites

Yahoo Maps in Flash

%MEDIA{
"http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/flash/V3.5/asGS.01.swf" 
base="http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/flash/V3.5/"
width="600px"
height="400px"
}%

pdf

%MEDIA{
"http://www.pdf-tools.com/public/downloads/whitepapers/whitepaper-pdfprimer.pdf"
width="100%"
height="100%"
}%

generates:

mp3

%MEDIA{
"%ATTACHURL%/test.mp3"
play="false"
autoplay="false"
height="20"
}%

generates:

wav

%MEDIA{
"%ATTACHURL%/test.wav"
play="false"
autoplay="false"
height="20"
}%

generates:

midi

%MEDIA{
"%ATTACHURL%/test.mid"
play="false"
autoplay="false"
height="20"
}%

generates:

Notes for developers

Detection of media type / recommended plugin syntax

The plugin detects most media types and uses a hybrid of the html markup recommended by the browser plugin makers - in the hope of providing maximum compatibility. This is done simply by checking the extension of the filename. Or, if the filename contains youtube.com it will automatically use Flash.

Originally, the plugin used (almost) the exact recommended HTML on a type-by-type basis, but I've abandoned this in favor of "one markup fits all" because you don't know which plugin will be handling what - the various ISO formats (MPEG1,2,4, MP3) will be taken by whatever plugin was installed last, and QuickTime now handles Windows Media on Macintosh systems (at Microsoft's recommendation!).

While most of the HTML is as generic as possible, the classid value and some other mime-type information is unique to a particular file-type, and for Flash, QuickTime and Windows Media the Microsoft-sanctioned values are sent. I understand MSIE has to have this info or it totally burns ...

I haven't bothered with Real. If there's huge demand, it wouldn't be hard to add - but it may also be handled quite well by the generic media syntax already.

Defining additional file formats

The output of this plugin is partially governed by Foswiki templates. The mov file output is defined in templates/objectplugin_mov.tmpl:

%TMPL:DEF{"object"}%<object{MP_OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES}>{MP_OBJECT_PARAMS}<embed{MP_EMBED_ATTRIBUTES}/></object>%TMPL:END%

Placeholders {MP_...} are replaced by %MEDIA{...}% parameters.

To add other types add your own template using the same naming scheme (objectplugin_ext.tmpl).

Plugin Settings

Change default settings in configure.

Configure setting	Meaning	Default
{AutoPlay}	Switch that defines if the media is played automatically	1
{Debug}	If set to 1, writes debugging info to data/debug.txt	0
{Height}	Default height of player	180
{ShowController}	Switch that defines if the controller is shown	1
{Width}	Default width of player	320

Installation Instructions

You do not need to install anything in the browser to use this extension. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the extension on the server.

Open configure, and open the "Extensions" section. Use "Find More Extensions" to get a list of available extensions. Select "Install".

If you have any problems, or if the extension isn't available in configure, then you can still install manually from the command-line. See http://foswiki.org/Support/ManuallyInstallingExtensions for more help.

Plugin Info

Plugin Authors:	TWiki:Main.PiersGoodhew, Foswiki:Main.SvenDowideit, Foswiki:Main.ArthurClemens
Copyright:	© 2006 TWiki:Main.PiersGoodhew, 2008-2009 Foswiki:Main.SvenDowideit, Foswiki:Main.ArthurClemens
License:	GPL (Gnu General Public License)
Version:	12678 (2011-10-01)
Release:	1.3.4
Change History:
01 Oct 2011	1.3.4 Arthur Clemens: Fixed an issue where the filetype was not read if it was appended with a query string. Fixes a bug where default attributes read from the tmpl could not be overridden. Added audio examples.
13 Sep 2009	1.3.3 Arthur Clemens: small refactoring; moved default settings to Configure.
22 Jun 2009	1.3.2 Arthur Clemens: Fixed call to unreleased internal function openAttachment.
20 Jun 2009	1.3.1: Arthur Clemens: Fixes media type lookup. For performance, plugin settings must now be done in SitePreferences.
08 Mar 2009	1.3: Mime types are now automatically added, so it is easier to get the browser call the right browser plugin.
08 Mar 2009	1.2: Integrated EmbedFlashPlugin; major code refactoring.
03 Mar 2009	ObjectPlugin renamed to MediaPlugin
20 Feb 2009	Ported to Foswiki
20 Oct 2008	Modernise with Foswiki:Extensions.BuildContrib, add EMBED Tag, remove WikiWord issues, templatise html output, add YouTube supprt - Foswiki:Main.SvenDowideit
16 Oct 2006	Initial version
Change History:
Dependencies:	None
Plugin Home:	http://foswiki.org/Extensions/MediaPlugin
Support:	http://foswiki.org/Support/MediaPlugin