iWeb won't play nice with .mov files

If you want help with the iWeb method of playing video, you would need to publish the URL to the problem page.

This way of playing movies is very outdated and requires the visitor to have the plugin installed in their browser. Many windows user don't.

The video file format should ideally be an MP4 and the video format H.264 optimized for streaming so that the movie will start to play before it is fully downloaded in the browser.

Autoplay should never be used and its far better to load a poster image and prevent the movie from playing until the visitor selects it. Otherwise the page download time will be effected and the movie will stutter and stop as appears to be happening in your case.

If you want to depend on the QuickTime plugin you should consider using a code like those shown on this page...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Movie-Video/Poster-Movie.html

The second method is better if you think some visitors may be using mobile devices.

Nowadays its more usual to employ HTML5 playback with flash fallback for outdated browsers. VideoJS is probably the easiest solution when you only have one video per page...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Movie-Video/Fallback-To-Flash.html

A poster image loads with the web page and the movie file is prevented from loading by setting preload="none" in the video tag.

Using this method you can get away with uploading only an MP4 (rather than mp4, ogg and WebM) since the player will fallback to flash for Firefox and older versions of IE.

Flowplayer is a better bet when you have more than one movie per page since it can be set to stop one movie when another is selected...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Movie-Video/Flow-Player-5-2.html

Its a "stock" answer because its a common problem for those who assume they can just upload any old movie and it will play. If you upload the movie in the way that you have, the whole web page and the movie file have to download before it will play. This can take a long, long time.

You need to remember that iWeb is now redundant. Other drag and drop style apps have moved on to using HTML5 with flash fallback. It is possible to create a website without using any code but the features are going to be limited.

Without seeing your web page I can't comment on the problem but I doubt if its a bandwidth issue. Bandwidth is only a factor if you have hundreds or thousands of visitors accessing your site at once.

There's a couple of reasons why you get the QT symbol but I can't even guess without seeing your page.

.mov is not used much nowadays since the file size is large compared with a compressed format like MP4. You also need to prep your file properly for internet streaming.

It could be a server problem as it works on mine...

http://96.0.63.10/iWeb-Test-3/qt-movie.html

The only difference is that I took the spaces out the file name like so...

strawberry-festival-07-3.mov

... which you should do.

Note how on your web page the loading progress bar doesn't move but on mine it loads fairly fast.

The movie file should be here and isn't...

http://sewbeait.com/Media/Strawberry-Festival-2007.mov

There aren't any apps that can import your iWeb created site. You would need to rebuild it by copying and pasting the content from the original.

There's a new app being developed right now which works like iWeb but has a lot more features...

https://www.facebook.com/easyweb

Be warned though, that EasyWeb is only at the beta testing stage at the moment and is not likely to be launched and available for at least another month. Don't know whether you are prepared to wait that long?

Also be advised, that when it does become publicly available, you will have to purchase hosting from Rage to be able to get the app. If you already have hosting, then it might not be worth it and you should start looking at other alternatives now.

If you don't mind about the hosting, then this will not be a problem.

Well, that is the whole point about the beta version - it is a testing version so you won't be able to download it and the only testers of the software are those that have been invited to test it by Rage. As I stated in my previous post, it won't be available publicly for at least another month or so and then it will be tied to Rage hosting and from other reports that I have heard, is likely to cost $99 a year.

Yes, I totally agree that the app should have nothing to do with the hosting, but that is their decision and I think by linking this app to hosting, they are trying to make it like iWeb and MobileMe, so that you are tied to the hosting account and there are some things in EasyWeb that will only work with hosting, just like the blog comments on iWeb would only work with MobileMe etc.

Have a look at other alternatives such as RapidWeaver, Sandvox, Freeway Express 6, Flux 4 and Quick n' Easy Website Builder and WebAcappella. These are all good alternatives and you can downlload free trials of most, so you can try before you buy.

A few are available in the Mac App Store.

By giving you the URL to the video file in the Media folder I am trying to point out that the file is not there or has the wrong URL which is why the movie won't play on the actual "Video" page of your site.

With regard to the rather uninformed comments about EasWeb in this forum, you need to remember that the majority of iWeb users were quite happy to fork out a 100 bucks for a MobileMe subscription to get the convenience and simplicity of one click publishing and the extra features that were made possible by tied hosting.

The average iWeb user doesn't appear to want to apply any extra effort to create website features such as contact forms, dropdown menus and media players that actually work satisfactorily. By using tied hosting for the necessary assets and scripts, these features, and many others, become possible with a few mouse clicks and a little dragging around.

Even fairly experienced iWeb users seem to resort to using services like Wufoo for their forms, Wow for slideshows and YouTube for movies. These require the use of assets on other servers and I don't hear people complaining about having to host their form scripts and data on "tied" hosting or their movies on YouTube!