Poster Images for your embedded videos

I was wondering how you get the poster images (The picture that displays as the freeze frame) before the video is played.

Most sites online said it was only possible by using all quicktime movies.  I don't believe this and obviously its not true.

If anyone needs more clarification about what I'm asking just post your question.
Thanks

Robert and Bryn can answer your question on how to do this for Windows Media Player.  Hang tight and I will send them over to this thread to teach you how.

Keep posting,
lenn

I'm actually not sure which tool Robert uses, but when I take the snapshot, i use a utility called MovieSnapshot. The image itself is displayed using a little CSS and script trickery. The video player is actually not visible until you hit play, at that time, we make the screenshot invisible and the player visible and the clip begins.

I use Microsoft's Digital Image Pro 9. http://www.microsoft.com/products/imaging/products/dipinfo.asp

I play the video until it gets to a place where I want to take a screen capture. Then I hit "Alt-PrtSc" which takes a picture of the Window I'm on and puts that on the clipboard.

Go to Paint, paste the image in. Save as BMP.

Open up Digital Image Pro 9. Open the image. Then crop it. Then save it as JPG.

After that I FTP it up to the server. Bryn's code takes care of the rest.

Good tip. I've wondered about this question too.

great tip!

Thank you so much for replying to my question.  That really helped out a lot.

I've just started getting into Java and HTML.  Style sheets are still kinda new to me along with scripting in html.

But I will try different things and see if I can get it to work... thats how I learn.

Thanks Again!