molendijk

The player used on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID is YouTube's version3 player. If you want to use it directly (without the watch?v= part) you can do, for instance: http://www.youtube.com/v/EUSsXdhxFIM?version=3. (You may have to press CTRL if you want this to work in IE).

The advantage of the version3-player over other versions is that a click on a playing video doesn't open a new YouTube window containing all sorts of information that you may not be interested in. The click event just pauses the video.

You can include a version3-video with something like:

Code:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" style="position:absolute; left:20%; top:20%; height:60%; width:60%; border:1px solid black;" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/EUSsXdhxFIM?version=3&amp;rel=0&amp;autoplay=1&amp;showinfo=0&amp;start=5" >
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EUSsXdhxFIM?version=3&amp;rel=0&amp;autoplay=1&amp;showinfo=0&amp;start=5" >
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" >
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" >
<param name="flashvars" value="autoplay=true" >
</object>

As soon as I understood this, I decided to write a script allowing us to load videos (that use the version3 player) with the help of a javascript function.
Demos and explanations HERE.
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Arie.