html+js+... and all that excess baggage VS. just the WMV

[ChrisGreaves]

(Correct forum?)

So I had compiled videos with the free Camtasia (v3?) about a year ago, uploaded the packages to my server and everything worked fine.
I built a "Videos" web page that held links to the Camtasia-generated HTML pages, ...

Last week I had to load the 30-day trial Camtasia 7 because of Windows 7 (mutter mutter ...) compiled and uploaded the original recordings to my server and everything worked fine.


Today I was wandering around and found that the Camtasia video packages required me to install a plug-in, which I did, UN-successfully.
I was in a hurry so I built an el-cheapo web page that housed links to the WMV files only - bypassing the html, js etc. completely.

Works fine.

My question: What's the point of having the HTML and the java scripts and all that excess baggage?

[stuckling1]

I guess it might just be there to make the page look nicer? A lot of these auto generated scripts put in lots of cosemtic stuff as well as the important bits - a case in point is using Picasa to make we photo albums - you get a lot of HTML, CSS etc aswell as the pictures.

[jscher2000]

My question: What's the point of having the HTML and the java scripts and all that excess baggage?

This is hard to answer without looking at a sample page or having intimate knowledge of Camtasia. Generally speaking, a WMV often will scale to the browser window randomly (and unattractively) without an HTML <object> to set its dimensions.

[ChrisGreaves]

I guess it might just be there to make the page look nicer? A lot of these auto generated scripts put in lots of cosmetic stuff as well as the important bits - a case in point is using Picasa to make we photo albums - you get a lot of HTML, CSS etc as well as the pictures.

Hi Stuckling, and thanks for the response.
Perhaps I don't care (about the extras) because I'm putting up videos to show a proof-of-concept, and that's all.
The user/potential client clicks on a link, sees the video, realizes that I must have coded some VBA to get this far, picks up pen, signs cheque ...

[ChrisGreaves]

This is hard to answer without looking at a sample page or having intimate knowledge of Camtasia. Generally speaking, a WMV often will scale to the browser window randomly (and unattractively) without an HTML <object> to set its dimensions.

Thanks for the insight, Jefferson.
I'd not thought of "scaling".
Up to now for any of my serious prospects, a proof-of-concept video would be viewed in a 1024x or 1280x resolution, but I suppose some folks might now be viewing them on mobiles devices with much, much smaller resolutions.