# Solved: html open video in external player



## G-Stress (Feb 4, 2008)

Hi guys, I'm looking for a simple solution so it seems. I've ripped all of my dvd's on my media server to avi's and I have quite a big library. I'm going to create a basic html page with the cover of each movie as a link. 

When I click on the link/movie cover I want it to open via the default media player. For some reason this seems a bit hard to find what would seem to be a simple peice of code. Everything I keep reading on google keeps referring to embedding the videos.

All I want is when clicked to open in the default media player. Also this is not going to be streamed across the internet they are only going to be played on the local media server not even across the lan.

Thanks in advance for any advice, links, etc.


----------



## Big-K (Nov 22, 2003)

In that case, just link to the file directly. watch. They will have to download the entire thing before they can watch it though, since it isn't streaming.


----------



## G-Stress (Feb 4, 2008)

I tried that and got an error indicating FF doesn't know how to open the address because the protocol (c) isn't associated with a program. With IE just can't display page. That's what I thought that it should be that simple, but everything I read talks about embedding and streaming.

I would prefer if it didn't need to be downloaded. Basically what I want to do is create a nice looking web interface so instead of just opening the Movies folder and double clicking on a movie to play I want a nice looking web interface with an image along with title that will link to the moive and when clicked it will open in the default media player.

This is the closest thing I found so far that works in a sense, the only thing is, it opens in an embedded windows media player instead of externally.


```
<a href="F:\Movies\Spiderman.avi" title="Spiderman" rel="enclosure" onclick="window.open('http://embedthevideo.com/popup.php?url='+this.href,'video','width=360,height=305,top=20,left=20,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false">Spiderman</a>
```
From http://embedthevideo.com


----------



## G-Stress (Feb 4, 2008)

I found a solution for IE and it works fine. To think this was as hard to find as it was. Apparently the reason a direct link to the file will not work is for security purposes which is nice, but I got it working with IE using the following link: 
http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/internet-explorer-does-not-open-links-to-audio-or-video-files/

For anyone interested I used the following code to link to the file:


```
<a href="file://g:/Movies/Spiderman.avi">Spiderman</a>
```


----------

