Video on the Web

Video on the web seems to get more and more popular every year (or maybe even every week). Nearly everyone that has ever been on the internet knows about youtube.com, and probably also about the ability to post video onto social networking sites like facebook.com and myspace.com. These are good resources to share videos, but what if you need professional quality, streaming video embedded right onto your website?

This is the question I'm looking to answer.. There are many video players out there that can be embedded into a website, but most of these seem to be expensive and some are difficult to use. Are there any FREE video players for the web that can be embedded on your site AND still look nice/play properly/etc? Youtube works fairly well, but your website is transformed into an advertisement for youtube. There are ways to embed an .mov or .mp4 directly into your webpage, but it can be a little tricky to get the code just right. Simply embedding it onto your site probaby won't work. A couple links to try:

http://www.2-popforums.com/forums/showthread.php?

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/chaffin_abraham/embedding-quicktime-movies.php

You can easily create a link to your movie that should make it play in a new window. Create text or an image to use as your link and then link to your movie file (.mov or .mp4) using the properties window (Dreamweaver). When you preview in your browser, the movie should play in a new window or download to the viewer's desktop. Use .mp4 to get better streaming capabilities.

One example of a free video player that seems to look nice and play pretty well:

http://flowplayer.org/

It also has an option to buy the software for customizable player options.

If anyone knows of a great free player that I should know about, tell me!