Question

On my web server I have a video file named 03.mp4.
I have a page (videoserver.aspx) to serve that file using below code

Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=video.mp4");
Response.TransmitFile(Server.MapPath("03.mp4"));
Response.End();

Whats the difference between these 2 calls?
1: http://localhost/media/03.mp4
2: http://localhost/media/videoserver.aspx?q=03

When I point to those URLs directly in my browser, it prompts me a Save dialog in both the cases.
I have another web page that has a SWFObject. It consumes a video as input. Ok. When I feed it URL 1, it loads the video.
When I feed it URL 2, it doesn’t load the video.

Why this difference? I prefer URL 2 as you can dynamically change the videos you are serving to consumers based on the query-string.

Answer 1

Hence it proves I am a newbie to SWFObject.
The SWFObject I was referring to was dished out by Camtasia and it accepts a mp4 file thru FLashVars.
The question is “why did it not accept URL 2 while it accepted URL 1?”. To which the answer is, URL 2 was not ending with .mp4.
And solution to my problem then was, create a handler that would accept */media/*.mp4 path and return the appropriate file’s content, which in my case is fetched from DB.