BURNING VIDEO CDs WITH HTML
| The process is one of creating a web site that never gets to the web. You need an index file
(index.html) which Netscape & Internet Explorer both look for, find and open when directed to it
by a URL on the web. In this case an applet from www.startertool.com (no longer in business in 2005) provides the files required
to autorun the finished CD when inserted into the drive. Without this set of files your intended
viewer must navigate to the directory on the CD, select and open the "index.html" file to get their
default browser to open. With Startertools gone, do a Google search for "autostart file". You will quickly find an alternative. The directory on my test CD looks like this:
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| I think you can make out the three files necessary to autostart the CD. They are "autorun.inf",
"autostart.ini" and "autostart.exe". Startertool provided a free evaluation copy of the file set. If you
name your index file as directed (index.html) you won't have to open or change anything in the three
files provided. If your HTML editor doesn't like the extension .html, save it as .htm and rename it
later. The other files in the directory are windows media files (videos) and image files in jpeg format,
which illustrate the link to each of the pieces. That portion of the page looks like this...
Your paths to the videos are simply their names. Since they reside in the same directory as the index
file, clicking on whatever link you have built to them will open Windows Media Player and present
the video. I have distributed copies of this disk to five individual PC users with various equipment
from an old P166 running Win95 to a brand new PIII 900kHz running Win 2000. In each case the
CD has autostarted, opened their default browser and played their video selections. Granted the
P166 couldn't keep up to the 700 kbps encoding rate of several of the pieces, but ran the 200 kbps
files fine.
I think this approach to presenting video on CD has great utility. You can't always depend on the
sophistication of either your viewer or their equipment, but just about everyone has a modern web
browser and the Windows default movie viewer. If their disk detector function is enabled there is no
work for them to do to enjoy your productions. Give it a try!
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