Chrome and Opera not playing application/x-director video

Question

There is a site containing an embedded youtube video and whose source code is

<object width="300" height="200" 
   data="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G7S5GEp****" 
   type="application/x-director">
<param name="url" value="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G7S5GEp****" />
<param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G7S5GEp****" />
<param name="sound" value="true" /><param name="progress" value="true" />
<param name="autostart" value="true" />
<param name="swstretchstyle" value="none" />
<param name="swstretchhalign" value="none" />
<param name="swstretchvalign" value="none" /></object>

The problem is that Opera and Chrome do not play this video showing the gray screen stating that "This plug-in is not supported" instead of the video. At the same time IE and Mozilla Firefox play the video without any problem. I check the behavior for the video and the browsers on two different PCs.

1. I found that application/x-director is an Adobe Shockwave Player video. So I thought that this is the problem. However, IE and Firefox play the video without Shockwave installed on my PC. I tried to install Shockwave but Chrome and Opera do not see the Shockwave plugin in their chrome://plugins or opera://plugins and still do not play the video.

2. Then I found that when I watch the video using IE or Firefox and click on it with the right button of the mouse I get the menu where it's written "About the html5 player" and when I go to the page I get to youtube page explaining html5 and checking my browser for html5 support (my browsers are up-to date and support it).

   I also found the SO question Embedding a shockwave file in HTML5 where it's told that the syntax of my video is the HTML5-syntax:

<object data="..." type="application/x-director" ...></object>

• So I can't understand if my video is a Shockwave video or a HTML5 video? And how can I make Chrome and Opera to play it correctly?
• As I can see this source code can't be played by many browsers by default. What is the best way to insert a youtube video into a site page in order it to be played correctly by most of browsers? (as far as I understand, it should be a html5-video as many browsers tend to stop supporting Adobe Flash products)?

I would be so grateful to get any help. Thank you for attention!

Answer 1

What is the best way to insert a youtube video into a site page in order it to be played correctly by most browsers?

Most browsers expect a video file to be put in a video tag. Since you are using Youtube, you have a page link (http) not a video file (mp4) so you must load the page within an i-frame. When Youtube servers see the request, they will return a video player for that link...

Replace your shown <object>-based code block with this <iframe> version...

<iframe width="300" height="200"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G7S5GEp****">
</iframe>

Also regarding...

• application/x-director is a small mistake by them, should be application/x-shockwave.
  It's small because it doesn't stop the machine running...

• <object> tag is NOT for embedding http links. To embed Flash apps put a link to the SWF file (output of Flash) as input source. For example : If Android apps could be embedded in browser they too would go into <object> where data="mysite/myapp.APK"...etc

• Using youtube.com/embed/ gives an HTML5-based player (for <iframe> tag),

• Using youtube.com/v/ gives a Flash-based player (for <object> tag).

• Also for Flash, setting width="300" height="200" is too small for input coming from another server, it will be blocked by especially Chrome since it notices that it's a banner size (Flash adverts are auto-blocked). Must have a minimum width="800" height="600" or else the only fix here is that Youtube SWF app (or any other SWF) must exist at same folder as your html files in your own server.