Does not appear to be working …

Ah, it has to load the entire video first apparently. That is bad for very large files.

Hmmm, trying different browsers on Linux. Firefox 3.6.x and Opera 11.50 apparently default to “flash” and take a long time to load. The Gnome Project’s Epiphany browser apparently handles this differently and starts playing almost immediately. Perhaps it is HTML5 capable? It seems odd that the flash would take so much longer since flash handlers for videos on other sites seem to be fairly quick to start playing. Is there a tweak I am missing here?

It would be ideal if you downloaded that video and hosted it on your site. That way the video wouldn’t have to be loaded entirely and it can be pseudo-streamed from your site using the plugin Streaming remote files will be hit or miss depending on the site that is serving the video. Many sites protect their videos (and images) from being accessed directly this way, so while it may work temporally, it is not likely to work long term.

For HTML5 video to work in Firefox you will have to have the video is Ogg/Vorbis format, not Mpeg4. This is a decision made by the Firefox development team for their implementation of the HTML5 video tag. If you only have the MP4 version of the file, it will work in the latest IE, Safari, and Chrome. The best combination to have is Ogg/Vorbis and Mpeg4, because that gives you Firefox compatibility, Flash fallback and playability on IE and Safari.

You should be able to find many free converters for Ogg/Vorbis. The one that produces the best files for me has been Firefogg:
https://firefogg.org/
I keep an old Firefox version installed just to use Firefogg.

But there are many out there.

It would be ideal if you downloaded that video and hosted it on your site.

Well, yes, it would. Technically, that file is hosted on our site. It is just the main www.* domain which is on the same server as our test site. The test site is just a subdirectory / subdomain off our main site.

The thing is, we are adding this plugin to one of our web site demonstrations for web development with WordPress. That particular demo is for churches who may want to put their church services on-line in text, audio and/or video format. They would almost all be using shared hosting with limited space for storage. The resolution we suggest is paid 3rd party hosting for video and audio content. There are some reasonably priced options for that and they supposedly handle streaming one’s videos well.

The best combination to have is Ogg/Vorbis and Mpeg4, because that gives you Firefox compatibility, Flash fallback and playability on IE and Safari.

Okay. So we do need to convert any video we want to use for a demonstration site. I would normally use the command-line ffmpeg on Linux for that. But I see that Firefogg uses ffmpeg too, so maybe I will try that first. Thanks for the suggestion.

Edit: Maybe not, “Firefogg 2.6.11 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.6.20.” ??

Well, yes, it would. Technically, that file is hosted on our site. It is just the main www.* domain which is on the same server as our test site. The test site is just a subdirectory / subdomain off our main site.

This actually simplifies matters. You don’t need to use the full URL at all then. Just set the video directory setting in the plugin settings to be the path where you store your videos, and then use the “file” short tag attribute to set the name of the video file (removing the file extension).

So in your case it would be:
[video file="BigBuckBunny_320x180"]

For converting to Ogg/Vorbis ffmpeg is a good option. Most GUI programs that convert to Ogg actually use it in the background. An easy one to use is MiroVideoConverter, which uses ffmpeg. There is a complete list of encoders for OGV here: https://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/TheoraSoftwareEncoders

You don’t need to use the full URL at all then. Just set the video directory setting in the plugin settings to be the path where you store your videos, and then use the “file” short tag attribute to set the name of the video file (removing the file extension).

I do have a directory set up on the test site for that. The demo is showing both ways for potential clients to see. You can see the demo page here if you are interested: https://churchdemo.eracc.com/welcome/posting-services-sermons/