I'm using the Longtail player to embed videos in my website. I followed the discussion on the Longtail forum and got my video sitemap validated and working. Here's the working video sitemap (reduced to just one video entry to illustrate): <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"> <url> <loc>http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-videos/Bali/Blue-Lagoon.htm</loc> <video:video> <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.bubblevision.com/player.swf?file=http://www.underwater-footage.com/videos/Blue-Lagoon-640x480.mp4</video:player_loc> <video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-videos/Bali/Blue-Lagoon-640x480.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc> <video:title>Blue Lagoon</video:title> <video:description>Scuba diving at Blue Lagoon near Padangbai in Bali, Indonesia</video:description> <video:tag>Nick Hope</video:tag> <video:tag>Bubble Vision</video:tag> <video:tag>Aquamarine Diving</video:tag> <video:tag>Aquamarine</video:tag> <video:tag>underwater</video:tag> <video:tag>scuba diving</video:tag> <video:tag>diving</video:tag> <video:tag>scuba</video:tag> <video:tag>fish</video:tag> <video:tag>critter</video:tag> <video:tag>travel</video:tag> <video:tag>nature</video:tag> <video:tag>wildlife</video:tag> <video:tag>marine life</video:tag> <video:tag>ocean</video:tag> <video:tag>coral reef</video:tag> <video:tag>reef</video:tag> <video:tag>Indonesia</video:tag> <video:tag>Bali</video:tag> <video:tag>Padangbai</video:tag> <video:tag>Padang Bai</video:tag> <video:tag>Blue Lagoon</video:tag> <video:tag>anemonefish</video:tag> <video:tag>lionfish</video:tag> <video:tag>cuttlefish</video:tag> <video:tag>catfish</video:tag> <video:tag>nudibranch</video:tag> <video:tag>shrimp</video:tag> <video:tag>moorish idol</video:tag> <video:tag>boxer shrimp</video:tag> <video:tag>leaf scorpionfish</video:tag> <video:tag>spotfin lionfish</video:tag> <video:category>Bali</video:category> <video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly> <video:duration>104</video:duration> </video:video> </url> </urlset> Code (markup): Now I want to get the video to autoplay on the Google Video results page (my video on bubblevision.com is 9th in the list at the time of writing), so I changed the 5th line above to: <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.bubblevision.com/player.swf?file=http://www.underwater-footage.com/videos/Blue-Lagoon-640x480.mp4&autostart=true</video:player_loc> Code (markup): However now the xml won't validate. Dreamweaver gives me "Unterminated entity reference, 'autostart'. The same thing happened when I tried to add '&image=image.jpg' to the line to get a jpeg background before the video is played. Any suggestions to fix this? Do I need quotes in there somewhere? Thanks!
To answer my own question, I should have used & in the code, not just & i.e. <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.bubblevision.com/player.swf?file=http://www.underwater-footage.com/videos/Blue-Lagoon-640x480.mp4&autostart=true</video:player_loc> Code (markup):