This page shows the various methods for adding a sound file to you auction. Video files may be similarly added.

Adding Sound to your Auction

Many users don't like the distraction or download-time associated with music in an auction and may hit the back button. However, there are many instances where music or sound is an integral part of the product being sold.  These include illustrating the sound of a music box, vinyl record, running engine, and such.

Capture your sound and save to a file, using the media software that came with your computer. Be sure the sound clip is short and the file is small. If the sound is to autostart with the auction, it should be under 40K, otherwise it may not load in time and could lock up your listing for some viewers. Midi files are the smallest sound files.

If you need to supply a larger file, then put it on a clickable link or use a start button so that the buyer can start the download when they are ready to do so. This is a courtesy to the 30-40% of dialup users who might find their machines tied up for 5 minutes or more waiting for a megabyte download.

Sound files must be hosted online to be used in an auction. They can be hosted on your website, on a file host, or on some image hosts.


Replace the URL for your own hosted file wherever we show http://www.myhost.com in the examples below.

Clickable Link

This is a clickable link that gives the user the option to hear the sound.

  <a href="http://www.myhost.com/soundfile.mid">Click to hear it</a>   

Default Media Player

This method calls the sound player that may be on the user's computer. There is usually some sort of player on most machines. If there is no player, the user's computer may seem to lock up during the time it searches for one. In the end, it may ask the user if a player should be downloaded.

  <center>
      <EMBED SRC=http://www.myhost.com/song.mid
      HIDDEN=false HEIGHT=100 WIDTH=195
      AUTOSTART=false LOOP=true>
      </EMBED>
  </center>

Download Microsoft Player

This method will fetch a player from Microsoft for Windows computers. This method will be rewritten and voided if it passes through eBay's description rewriter on the listing form. Do NOT touch the Standard tab or preview the code on the listing screen.

  <OBJECT ID="Player" height="100" width="150"
         CLASSID="CLSID:22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95"
         CODEBASE="http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab#Version=5,1,52,701"
         STANDBY="Loading Microsoft Windows Media Player components..."
         TYPE="application/x-oleobject">
         <PARAM name="filename" value="http://www.myhost.com/mysong.mid">
         <PARAM name="autoStart" value="false">
  </OBJECT>

Background sound

This is a method for invisibly embedding sound that can't be turned off, so it is NOT visitor friendly and not recommended for auctions. It only works in Internet Explorer and is merely included here for completeness.

  <bgsound src="http://www.myhost.com/soundfile.mid" loop=-1>

Flash sound or video files

eBay also approves of FLASH files for sound or images (but not for auction description). Here is a coding example of the OBJECT tag that automatically runs a Macromedia player from a remote site.

  <OBJECT id="FlashPlayer" width="290" height="135"
        classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
        codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0">
        <param name="movie" value="http://www.myhost.com/flashfile.swf">
        <param name="quality" value="high">
        <EMBED src="http://www.myhost.com/flashfile.swf" quality="high" 
            pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
            type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="290" height="135">
        </EMBED>
  </OBJECT>

Using an Online Service

The recent appearance of online audio/video services seems to solve the problem of both hosting and posting audio and video into an auction. eBay allows creation and inclusion of  Videos if they are hosted by one of these companies and if the hosted file is Flash.  Although I haven't tested these products, those that I have seen appear to work just fine in the auctions I examined.

• AOL
• AuctionMercial
• AuctionPlayer (either audio or video)
• AuctionVideo
• CarTHINK
• CreativeVideosOnline
• Dailymotion
  
• Google
• i2iAuction
• Microsoft
• MySpace
• Silverdock
• Vzaar
  
• YouTube.

eBay allows links to the video on the host site, or the video can be embedded directly in the auction.

Link to Video: The code to add a link to your page, that users would click, is similar to one of these:

        <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefghi">click for movie<a>
        <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcdefghi">click for movie<a>

Embed Video: Or you can embed the flash video in your auction using code that is similar to the flash file code above, like this:

<object height="350" width="425">
        <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefghi" />
        <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefghi"
        type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="350" width="425" />
</object>

 

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