While I don’t design websites using Flash, there are occasions where using Flash is recommended, such as when a website client wants to add video to their website. My hosting company, DreamHost, has made converting video to Flash and configuring your HTML code easy…DreamHost says: “DreamHost has licensed Jeroen Wijering’s excellent Flash Media Player. This tool enables all DreamHost customers to embed streamed audio and video into any of their web pages!” Note, I no longer recommend DreamHost to my clients.

1. Log into the DreamHost control panel (only available for DreamHost clients).

2. Click on “Goodies” and then “Flash Media”

3. Follow instructions for converting AVI, MOV, MPEG, MPG to FLV

4. Read the information here on DreamHost’s Embedded Flash Page

5. Note the code for the example:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://media.dreamhost.com/ufo.js”></script>
<p id=”sample.flv”><a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>Get the Flash Player</a> to see this player.</p>

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,
width:”320″,height:”240″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”,
flashvars:”file=https://media.dreamhost.com/sample.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false” };
UFO.create(FO,”sample.flv”);
</script>

6. NOTE: In order to get the Flash Variables to work, I had to remove the “amp;” from the “&” and just use the &

7. NOTE: DreamHost’s Wiki Flash Media Player Documentation.

8. Create the FLV, then using code example above or DreamHost’s Wiki code, add the code to your page, changing appropriate file names, paths, size.

9. FLASHVARS: These are variables that you can set to change the behavior or appearance of the video. Follow this link to read more about JW Player FlashVar settings. I’ve used the “image” variable to set a still image as the initial image for a video, so it doesn’t show that blank Flash window.

Thank You DreamHost!

If you found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it with your friends, it will be much appreciated. Thanks! Jill