Fred Endsley

Midi files are very small sound files that can add an audio facet to web pages without using much RAM. They are readily available from the web (search for MidiFarm).

The safest basic HTML tag for playing any embedded midi, or other sound file is:

<EMBED SRC="your file.mid (or .aif)" HEIGHT=O AUTOSTART=TRUE LOOP=TRUE>

This tag enables the file to automatically play and loop (forever) without a visible controller on any browser that has any midi plugin. Most browsers come with either or both the LiveAudio or Quicktime plugins which support midi play. Other midi plugins that can be easily downloaded, installed, and configured include the Crescendo and Yamaha plugins.

If you want to display a controller to allow the user to stop or replay the midi file, you also need to specify HEIGHT and WIDTH parameters. For example, the HEIGHT and WIDTH parameters necessary to display the controller for the Crescendo plugin is specified as:

<EMBED SRC="your file.mid" HEIGHT=55 WIDTH=200>

Crescendo also allows specifying the BGCOLOR and TXTCOLOR attributes of the controller within the <EMBED> tag, but there is no way to know if the user will have the Crescendo plugin, so your specification may be wasted.

The LiveAudio plugin can have a "CONSOLE" control that has Play, Pause, Stop, and Volume controls,
or a "SMALL CONSOLE" that has Play, Stop, Volume controls and will "autostart" by default.
The HTML for each is:

<EMBED SRC="your file.mid" CONTROLS=CONSOLE HEIGHT=60 WIDTH=144>

<EMBED SRC="your file.mid" CONTROLS=CONSOLE HEIGHT=15 WIDTH=144>

Other attributes that work for midi plugins include:

• AUTOSTART=TRUE / FALSE

• LOOP=TRUE / FALSE / INTEGER (where "INTEGER" = number of loops)

• STARTTIME=1:32 (where "1" is one minute, and "32" is 32 seconds, controls how far into the sound file the playback begins)

• ENDTIME=2:45 (where "2" is one minute, and "45" is 32 seconds, controls how far into the sound file the playback ends)

• VOLUME=0-100 (sets the sound volume between 0 and 100%)

These attributes can also be used within the <EMBED SRC> tag for standard embedded sound files that can also be played by the LiveAudio plugin or other midi/sound plugins, eg:

<EMBED SRC="your file.aif" CONTROLS=CONSOLE HEIGHT=15 WIDTH=144 AUTOSTART=TRUE LOOP=3 VOLUME=75>

Specific other attributes for using the Quicktime plugin for midi or sound file play can be found here.

Misc Notes:

• Multiple midi files can be played by embedding them in different frame pages.

• Macs must at least have Quicktime Musical Instruments Extension installed.

• Yamaha's MidPlug works better that the LiveAudio, Quicktime, or Crescendo plugins because it has more "voices" to synthesize more varied sounds, esp. bass and drums.

• Browsers must be configured for the plugin to recognize audio/x-mid, application/x-midi, audio/x-midi, and audio/midi mime types with suffixes of .mid and/or .midi.

• The browser can contain more than one different midi plugin at the same time, but they each must be configured to handle seperate mime types (above).

• Increase the browser's memory partition and cache size.

• Yamaha also has a Director XTRA for playing midis thru movies.

• More easily though, you can use Movie Player to convert midi files into Quicktime sound movies without changing the size of the file much. Then the converted midi file can be used in director or Quicktime soundtracks, or used in web pages, where all the normal Quicktime HTML tags/attributes apply.