Embedding a FLV file in a web page or blog post

Well I found out the hard way today that this is not actually possible - you don't embed the .flv file (extension means Flash Video) - you embed a Flash player, that references the flv file. Semantics - but important ones.

You have probably seen the "skin" of the JW FLV Media Player all over the web with good reason: it is cheap (free for personal use) and it works.

The code is pretty simple once you have JW FLV Media Player installed (note that I am using the "embed" code here taken from their wizard and not the javascript - this is because a lot of blog and CMS systems may add line breaks or other funky characters to code like this):

<embed
  src="http://ibizdaily.com/player.swf"
  width="328"
  height="200"
  bgcolor="#ffffff"
  allowscriptaccess="always"
  allowfullscreen="true"
  flashvars="file=http://ibizdaily.com/video.flv"
/>

And voila:

And there are lots of options (size, full screen, etc.). One caveat - if you are using IIS you may have to add the mime type .flv to the server configuration. That one almost killed me today :)

I also needed to use the full URL to get this to work - not a relative path.