jonathanztaub@yahoo.com wrote:[color=blue]
> I have a DVD CD.[/color]
Which is it? A DVD or a CD? They are different media, though they have
the same physical size and appearance.
In short, a CD is the traditional single layer optical disk which stores
around 650 to 700MB of data, often used for music or software. A DVD is
a more recent invention that uses different technology with two writable
layers and which can store up to 9GB of data per side (approx 4.5GB for
the typical DVD±R/±RW/RAM versions) often used for movies and large data
storage.
[color=blue]
> * Is it possible to embed it within an html page?[/color]
Ignoring the copyright and other legal issues, and knowing what I just
told you above about the amount of storage capacity on DVDs, how long do
you think a user is going to wait around to download and watch an entire
movie via your website?
[color=blue]
> * Does the user has to have windows media player or any other program
> associated with it?[/color]
Not specifically Windows Media Player, but they do require some media
player software that the browser can either embed directly or launch as
an external application, and which can decode the movie file format.
[color=blue]
> * How exactly do I use the <embed> tag?[/color]
Firstly, it's an element, not a tag and secondly, you don't use embed,
use <object>.
<object type="video/mpeg" data="/path/to/movie"
width="320" height="180">
<p>Provide some useful alternate content here, perhaps including a link
to the movie itself that the user may use to download the movie.</p>
</object>
Note: Replace the type attribute value with the appropriate MIME type
for whatever video format you use.
[color=blue]
> * Do I have to convert the original to another format?[/color]
Yes, unless you can somehow magically deliver the physical disc for me
to insert into my own DVD player. Again, ignoring the legal issues
involved for now, you first need to rip the movie from the DVD. This
will usually result in some VOB files containing the movie in the DVD
file format (I think it makes use of MPEG-2 internally, IIRC). There
are then several other programs you will need to convert those files
into a useful video format like AVI or MPEG, compress it and reduce it
to a downloadable size.
There may even be programs that can perform all the necessary tasks for
you in a single automated process, though it's been a while since I
looked into it.
Keep in mind though, that the more you compress the file, the lower the
video quality would be. It is generally easier to spend $6 at a local
video rental store, than it is to download an entire low quality movie
from the web.
However, if you're really interested in illegal DVD piracy and the
distribution of ripped movies, there are some fairly good IRC channels
and FTP sites that specialise in such practices that you may wish to
look into instead.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/ http://GetFirefox.com/ Rediscover the Web
http://GetThunderbird.com/ Reclaim your Inbox
Embedding a DVD movie to an HTML page 
