Video player (best/smallest there is) ?!?

[henkjans]

Dear Forum colleagues,

my goal is to make a Help (html) running on a machine controlling computer.
while this computer runs realtime software (to ensure some machine actions take place when our software demands it and not Windows) we do not install to many unnescessarry software on this computer.

I want to use video's in the Help but do not like to use Windows media player to play it.
Is there anybody who has experience with a certain kind of player (played by a little tool)??

I'm curious about your reply

[RamonS]

The VLC player is rather compact and play everything. As far as browser based players go, I made good experiences with Joeroen Wijering's flash video player. If either of them solves your problem is hard to say.

[trainey]

If it's webhelp you're creating, and the computer from which it is viewed has internet access, you could embed external links to YouTube videos within the help output. That would require the videos be placed on YouTube or somewhere else of course, but we've done this very successfully in the past with our webhelp on our company web site.
This solution allows you to avoid installing any video player outside of the browser.

[RamonS]

That isn't entirely correct. You still need the YouTube player with is a flash application embedded in their pages. Yes, you do not need to install anything extra on the client side, but since YouTube also uses flash video you can use Wijering's player and not have the world see what you are up to.

[nickatwork]

Perfect case for HTML5.....shame its hardly supported or defined yet....

[RamonS]

Yep....if the major parties could just agree on one video codec and stop being like kids in a sandbox fighting over a shovel.

[henkjans]

WebHelp is out of the question. Controlling the machine is the first and most importand prio!
I will focus on the sollutions of Ramon5
Thanx you guys!