How to Stream and Embed from Dropbox

There are two ways to display your content using Dropbox: through a Dropbox webpage, or by embedding the video on your site. The first is the easiest and requires no special encoding skills.

To display on a Dropbox webpage, you do the following: Open your Dropbox folder on your desktop and navigate to your video. Right click on the video and you should see a Dropbox drop-down list. Next, click on Get Link.


This should launch your browser and take you to the webpage. You can now grab that link and send it out. Whoever has that link will see this page and be able to view your video. There is even an option to download the video.


Embed from Dropbox

The second option requires at least a basic understanding of how HTML embed codes work. It’s not complicated, so don’t be scared off, but it’s also not copy and pasting an embed code from YouTube. You’re essentially creating your own embed code.


You start with the following HTML5 code as a template:

<video width="320" height="240" controls="controls">
<source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>


Now, follow the steps above on getting the link to the video. Then, where you see “movie.mp4,” you’ll want to replace this with that link. For example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/os51r68ogwfl408/your_video_here.mp4.


Next, you’ll want to adjust your width & height. You’ll want to use dimensions that best fit within your site.


When you’re all done, your embed code should look something like this:


<video width="512" height="288" controls="controls">
<source src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/os60r63ogwfl408/your_video_here.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>


Now just post this code on your site and you’re good to go.