At the school where I work I've got an online searchable database of video tapes and dvds, using MySql and PHP on a Linux machine. It works fine. I'm trancoding some of the tapes to avi files, which can be accessed as a samba share. I'd like to put clickable links into the database, so if a user sees the file is coloured blue, they can click it and it plays. I've got it working, but:
Using a 'href' link in HTML code of the PHP powered web page, the file is downloaded at the user end completely before it starts playing in MS Media Player, which results in an unacceptably long delay (the file could be 200Meg). But if a user accesses the file directly through the file system using the samba share directory, the video starts almost immediately and 'streams'.
I've looked at using the tag, but this appears to embed the whole video in the web page, which is not really what I want.
How can I embed into my PHP powered web page a link that uses samba file sharing, so it streams to MS Media player, please?
Jim Ford