In version 3.1 of the Flash Video plugin, the entire capability of Jeroen Wijering’s FLV Player is made available. Options in italics are not included in the plugin options page as they are specific to the file and as such should not be set globally. However, all options are available in-line. Keep in mind also, that default values set in the plugin options panel can always be overridden inline in a post.
File Properties
- author (undefined): author of the video, shown in the display or playlist.
- date (undefined): publish date of the media file.
- description (undefined): text description of the file.
- duration (0): duration of the file in seconds.
- file (undefined): location of the mediafile or playlist to play.
- image (undefined): location of a preview image; shown in display and playlist.
- link (undefined): url to an external page the display, controlbar and playlist can link to.
- start (0): position in seconds where playback has to start.
- tags (undefined): keywords associated with the media file.
- title (undefined): title of the video, shown in the display or playlist.
- type (undefined): this is determines what type of mediafile this item is, and thus which ”’model the player should use to determine playback. Supported values are ‘’sound”, ”image”, ”video”, ”youtube”, ”camera”, ”http”, ”lighttpd” or ”rtmp”.
Colors
- backcolor (undefined): background color of the controlbar and playlist. This is white with the default skin.
- frontcolor (undefined): color of all icons and texts in the controlbar and playlist.
- lightcolor (undefined): color of an icon or text when you rollover it with the mouse.
- screencolor (undefined): background color of the display.
* Colorization is only supported if the skin supports it too.
Layout
- controlbar (bottom): position of the controlbar. Can be set to ”bottom”, ”over” and ”none”.
- height (400): height of the display in pixels. When [#External resizing] is set to ”false”, this is the overall player height.
- playlist (none): position of the playlist. Can be set to ”bottom”, ”over”, ”right” or ”none”.
- playlistsize (180): when ”below” this refers to the height, when ”right” this refers to the width of the playlist.
- skin (undefined): location of a SWF file with the player graphics.
- width (280): width of the display in pixels. When resizing is set to ”false”, this is the overall player width.
Behavior
- autostart (false): automatically start the player on load.
- bufferlength (1): number of seconds of the file that has to be loaded before starting. Set this to a low value to enable instant-start and to a high value to get less mid-stream buffering.
- displayclick (play): what to do when one clicks the display. Can be ”play”, ”link”, ”fullscreen”, ”none”, ”mute”, ”next”. When set to ”none”, the handcursor is also not shown.
- icons (true): set this to ”false” to hide the play button and buffering icon in the middle of the video.
- item (0): playlistitem that should start to play. Use this to set a specific start-item.
- linktarget (_blank): browserframe where the links from display are opened in. Some possibilities are ‘_self’ (same frame) , ‘_blank’ (new browserwindow) or ‘none’ (links are ignored in the player, so javascript can handle it).
- logo (undefined): location of an external jpg, png or gif image to show in a corner of the display. With the default skin, this is top-right, but every skin can freely place the logo.
- mute (false): mute all sounds on startup. Is saved in a cookie.
- quality (true): enables smoothed playback. This sets the smoothing and deblocking of videos on/off. Is saved in a cookie.
- repeat (none): set to ”list” to play the entire playlist once, to ”always” to continously play the song/video/playlist and to ‘’single” to continue repeating the selected file in a playlist.
- resizing (true): by default, the player will resize itself to fill the entire canvas. Set this to ”false” if you don’t want the player to resize (e.g. when you [wiki:FlexEmbedding load the player in a Flex application]).
- shuffle (false): shuffle playback of playlist items.
- stretching (uniform): defines how to resize images in the display. Can be ”none” (no stretching), ”exactfit” (disproportionate), ”uniform” (stretch with black borders) or ”fill” (uniform, but completely fill the display).
- volume (90): startup volume of the player. Can be 0 to 100. Is saved in a cookie.
External
- abouttext (undefined): text to show in the rightclick menu. Please do not change this if you don’t have a commercial license! When ”undefined” it shows the player version.
- aboutlink (http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/): url to link to from the rightclick menu. Do not change this if you don’t have a commercial license!
- plugins (undefined): a powerful new feature, this is a comma-separated list of swf plugins to load (e.g. ”yousearch,viral). Each plugin has a unique ID and resides at ”plugins.longtailvideo.com”. Go to the LongTailVideo AddOns section to see all available plugins.
Config File
All flashvars can also be listed in an XML file and then fed to the player using a config file.
- config (undefined): location of a XML file with flashvars. Useful for short embed codes or CDN stream redirecting.
Using Special Characters (& = ?)
Note that you must urlencode the three glyphs ? = & inside flashvars, because of the way these flashvars are presented to the player. The urlencoded values for these symbols are listed here:
? ? %3F
= ? %3D
& ? %26
So if your file to play is at the location getplaylist.php?id=123&type=flv, you must set the file flashvar to getplaylist.php%3Fid%3D123%26type%3Dflv.
Player Options (version 2.x)
In version 2.1 of the Flash Video plugin, the entire capability of Jeroen Wijering’s FLV Player is made available. The following list details each of the variables available for customization. Keep in mind also, that default values set in the plugin options panel can always be overridden inline in a post. Check out Computer Repairs Wellington Point, we always provide expert solutions on handling computer operating system install and repairs.
Basic Settings
- height (number): This variable defines the height of the player in pixels (does not include control bar).
- width (number): This variable defines the width of the player in pixels.
- filename (url): The location of the file to play. It can be a single file (MP3/FLV/RTMP/JPG/SWF/PNG/GIF) or a playlist for the player. The path should be relative to the WordPress install directory.
- image (url): This variable will allow you to show a poster frame of your movie. It can be a JPG/SWF/PNG or GIF file. You can also assign an image for every item in a playlist. The path should be relative to the WordPress install directory.
- searchbar (true, false): Set this to false to hide the searchbar below the display. You can set the search destination with the searchlink flashvar.
Player Colors
- backcolor (hex color): Background color of the player. The default is 0xFFFFFF (white).
- frontcolor (hex color): Texts / buttons color of the player. The default is 0×000000 (black).
- lightcolor (hex color): Rollover/ active color of the player. The default is 0×000000 (black).
- screencolor (hex color): Color of the display background screen. The default is 0×000000 (black).
Display Appearance
- logo (url): Set this variable to put a watermark logo in the top right corner of the display. All image formats are supported, but transparent PNG files give the best results. The path should be relative to the WordPress install directory.
- overstretch (true,false,fit,none): Defines how to stretch images/movies to make them fit the display. “true” will stretch them proportionally to fill the display, “false” will stretch them to fit. “fit” will stretch them disproportionally to fit both height and width. “none” will show all items in their original dimensions. Defaults to “fit”.
- showeq (true,false): Set to true to show a fake equalizer in the display. It adds a nice graphical touch when you are playing MP3 files.
- showicons (true,false): Show or hide the play and activity icons in the middle of the display. Defaults to true. If set to false, the overlaid control bar will also hide.
Controlbar Appearance
- shownavigation (true,false): Set this to false to completely hide the controlbar.
- showstop (true,false): Set this to true to show a stop button in the controlbar.
- showdigits (true,false,total): Set this to false if you don’t want the elapsed/remaining time to display in the control bar of the players. Set it to “total” to show the total time instead of the remaining time.
- showdownload (true,false): Set this to true to show a download button in the control bar. The download button links to the link variable (explained below under the “Interaction” section).
- usefullscreen (true,false): Set this to false to hide the fullscreen button and disable fullscreen.
Playlist Appearance
- autoscroll (true,false): By default, the playlist area of the players will have a scrollbar if the number of items is too long. If you set this variable to “true”, the scrollbar will disappear and the playlist will scroll automatically, depending upon the mouse position.
- displayheight (number): This variable is used by the players and sets the height of the display. It defaults to the height of the SWF object minus the controlbar (20px), but if you set it to a smaller height, the playlist will show up. If you set it to the height of the player itself (or larger), the controlbar will auto-hide over the video.
- displaywidth (number of pixels): Instead of the “displayheight”, you can set “displaywidth” to a size smaller that the SWF width to make the playlist appear at the right side of the display.
- thumbsinplaylist (true,false): If you have a playlist that also includes preview images with the <image> element, you can set this variable to “true” to show them in the playlist.
Playback Behavior
- audio (url): Assigns an additional, synchronized MP3. Use this for a closed audio description or director’s comments.
- autostart (true,false,muted): Set this to “true” to make the player automatically start playing when the page loads. If set to “muted”, the player will autostart with the volume set to 0 and an unmute icon in the display.
- bufferlength (number): This sets the number of seconds an FLV should be buffered ahead before the player starts it. Set this smaller for fast connections or short videos. Set this bigger for slow connections. The default is 3 seconds.
- captions (url): Assigns closed captions. Captions should be in TimedText format (example).
- fallback (url): If you play an MP4 file, set here the location of an FLV fallback. It’ll automatically be picked by older flash players.
- repeat (true,false,list): By default, the players will stop playback after every item to preserve bandwidth (repeat=false). You can set this to “list” to playback all items in a playlist once, or to “true” to continously playback your song/movie/playlist.
- rotatetime (number): Use this variable to set the number of seconds you want an image to display. The default is “5″.
- shuffle (true,false): If you use a playlist, this setting will automatically shuffle the entries. Set this to “false” to play all items sequentially.
- smoothing (true,false): If set to “false”, video will not smooth, resulting in a more pixelated, but better performing display. Use this for large screen / slow computer combinations.
- volume (number): The default volume for playback of sounds/movies is 80, but you can set another startup value with this variable.
External Communication
- callback (url): Set this variable to the location of a serverside script (PHP/ASP) that can process callbacks. The players will send a callback every time an item starts/stops, so you can save statistics with the server-side script. More info can be found in this demonstration page. An example callback script is placed in the “extras” folder of the downloads. Set this to “analytics” to send the callbacks automatically to Google Analytics. More detailed information can be found here.
- enablejs (true,false): Set this to true to enable javascript interaction. This will only work online! Javascript interaction includes playback control, asynchronous loading of media files and return of track information to javascript. An example of all supported javascript functions can be found on this page.
- javascriptid (string): If you control multiple players with javascript, you can use this variable to give each of them a unique ID. It will be returned with every call to the getUpdate() event. Demo on this page.
- link (url): Set url to an external URL, downloadable version of the file, or force-download script you can use for downloading the file. You can assign link-clicks to the display (see below), the downloadbutton and every item in a playlist.
- linkfromdisplay (true,false): You can set this variable to “true” to make a click on the image/video display to result in a jump to the “link” webpage. By default, a click on the display will play/pause the movie.
- linktarget (frame): The targetframe a link (from the display or playlist buttons) will open into. The default is “_self”. Set it to “_blank” to open links in a new window.
- recommendations (url): Set this to an XML with items you want to recommend. The thumbs will show up when the current movie stops playing, just like YouTube. Here’s an example setup and example XML.
- searchlink (url): Sets the destination of the searchbar. The default is the LongTail search page (which you can brand with your logo, colors and XML), but you can set other destinations (e.g. http://yoube.com/results?search_query=). Use the searchbar option to hide the bar altogether.
- streamscript (url): Set this to the URL of a script to use for http streaming movies. The parameters file and pos are sent to the script. Here’s more info and an example script. If you use LigHTTPD streaming, set this to lighttpd.
- type (mp3,flv,rtmp,jpg,png,gif,swf,rbs,3gp,mp4,m4v): The player determines the type of file to play based upon the last three characters of the “file” variable. This method doesn’t work if you use database id’s or mod_rewrite to retrieve the files. Therefore you can set this variable to tell the players of which filetype the file you want to play is. The type is also assigned to every item in a playlist. If no match is found, the player assumes a playlist is loaded.
Using Special Characters (& = ?)
Note that you must urlencode the three glyphs ? = & inside flashvars, because of the way these flashvars are presented to the player. The urlencoded values for these symbols are listed here:
? → %3F
= → %3D
& → %26
So if your file to play is at the location getplaylist.php?id=123&type=flv, you must set the file flashvar to getplaylist.php%3Fid%3D123%26type%3Dflv.
Enable Google Analytics tracking on videos:
- Make sure you website is currently being tracked by Google. If you need to sign up, visit this webpage: Google Analytics. It’s free for private use. Once you’ve signed up and configured your website appropriate (and see your traffic data), you’re ready to track videos!
- In the global plugin options page, set the Callback URL (under Interaction) to analytics.
- Check to make sure Enable JavaScript is checked
That’s it! You should start seeing the stream_start and stream_end events in a day or two. Keep in mind, you will likely have to search for them, as video plays generate lower traffic than page views. The URL format will be (assuming the flv file is called 300.flv): stream_start/300.flv and stream_end/300.flv