FLV Embed
FLV Embed is a WordPress plugin made to simplify the process of adding Flash videos (FLV) into your blog using Jeroen’s FLV Player.
For commercial use and implementation, you need to purchase a license for the player. If you want information about encoding videos into FLV and why you should use FLV, Jeroen has also written an excellent article which you can find on his site.
First of all, I do know there are already quite a few plugins that does similar things but I decided to make my own plugin for several reasons:
- to enforce a standard plugin tag style (all of my other plugins use the same tag style)
- no bells and whistles, this plugin embeds an FLV file and does it the easiest way
- uses highly portable, extensible and future proof tags
- XHTML compliant for those who cares about validation
Starting from version 1.0, FLV Embed supports Google video sitemap generation, the first WordPress plugin that does it for you! ;)
FLV Embed in action
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Video sitemap
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Features
- uses simple, intuitive tags to generate Flash video (FLV) movies for your posts
- supports video sitemap generation
- standards compliant: valid XHTML
- many options are configurable, such as autostart, show/hide control bar, player colour, poster image, full screen button etc.
- highly interactive admin option panel for player configuration
- supports text only output for RSS that prompt readers to visit the original post for Flash content
- supports outputting poster image for RSS if desired
- accessibility: requires Javascript to display FLV player, but will prompt user to enable Javascript when disabled
- accessibility: prompt user to download latest Flash player if it is not installed or too old
- accessibility: no annoying “click to activate” for IE users
Usage
This plugin uses one universal, standard tag style:
- url – the URL of the FLV file you want to embed, the path can either be site-relative or absolute
- width – width of the FLV movie
- height – height of the FLV movie
Jeroen’s FLV Player supports poster frame so you can turn on this feature via options if desired. The following two examples show FLV embed with and without poster frame.
Without poster frame
The poster frame feature is turned off by default.
Example input:
Example output:
With poster frame
In order to use this poster frame feature, you will need to turn it on via options. Once turned on, the player will look for preview image that share the same filename as the embedded FLV file. For example, if your embedded FLV file is “demo.flv”, the player will display “demo.jpg” as preview image. By default, the filetype of preview image is “jpg”, but this can be changed via options.
Example input:
Example output:
Version 0.3 onwards
Starting from version 0.3, it is possible to have your poster image at a different location than your FLV files. To achieve that, an optional 4th argument for the input tag and a new option $flv_posterpath were introduced. Below shows the tag syntax that should be used to provide a poster path:
- movie – the URL of the FLV file, the path can either be site-relative or absolute
- poster – the URL of the poster image, the path can either be site-relative or absolute
- width – width of the FLV movie
- height – height of the FLV movie
It is recommended that you try different settings for $flv_posterpath (found in option panel) and poster argument to have a feel how they work. There are several different ways how you could combine $flv_posterpath and optional poster path tag parameter to tell the plugin the poster location is not the same as the flv location.
If all your poster images are put within the same directory but not the same as the FLV files, change $flv_posterpath to point to your image directory, and no poster argument is required when using the embed tags. Make sure all the poster images have the same filename as the FLV files. If your poster images are scattered all over the places i.e. not within the same directory and not necessarily has the same filename as your FLV files, then use the poster argument to indicate where the poster image is.
The plugin detects the path used in the tags to determine if $flv_posterpath and $flv_flvpath should be used. In cases where absolute or site relative path are given as argument for the tags, $flv_posterpath and $flv_flvpath will have no effect on the output.
Users without Flash or Javascript
Unfortunately, about 2% of your users might not have Flash installed and about 10% of them might not have Flash 8 or above according to Adobe. For these users, the ufo.js will detect and output appropriate message that prompts these users to download and install latest Flash player onto their computers. Here’s an example screenshot that show you how this works:
While most modern browser supports Javascript, some users are too afraid that Javascript will screw up their computer so they turn it off just to be safe. This becomes a problem because this WordPress plugin relies on Javascript to display the FLV Player. To solve this problem, “noscript” tags are used to prompt these users to enable their Javascript and refresh the page for the Flash player to show up. Here’s an example screenshot:
Text only output:
By default, this plugin will output text that reads “[See post to watch Flash video]” for your RSS feeds only. If you wished you could display the poster image in your RSS feeds by setting $flv_posterinfeed option (see below) to 1.
Sitemap
Starting from version 1.0, FLV Embed supports video sitemap generation. In order to see the video sitemap option panel, you need to turn on the sitemap feature under your FLV Embed option panel.
The plugin will try to create a video sitemap file in your blog root but this might not be successful depending on your server configuration. If the plugin is unable to create the video sitemap file for you, then you will need to manually upload the video sitemap file to your blog root, chmod it “664″ (or “666″ depending on your server configuration) and tell the plugin where to locate your video sitemap under options.
Custom field data are used by the plugin to generate the video sitemap. If you have been using FLV Embed in the past, you can tell the plugin to insert missing custom field data for all published post by clicking the “Update Custom Fields” button within your video sitemap option page. This will also update any existing custom fields should there be any noticeable changes.
Automatic custom field insert can be disabled on a per post basis by putting [flv:skip] at the end of your blog post. Each time video sitemap is rebuilt successfully, Google will be pinged about the sitemap updates automatically. This plugin will try not to ping Google more than once per hour (as per Google’s suggestion), but you can override this by manually pinging via the “Force Ping” button found in sitemap option panel.
Click on the demo below to have a look how the generated video sitemap will look like. You might want to “view source” to see the actual XML content.
Options
Starting from version 1.0, you can change just about everything this plugin does using the plugin option panel. Below list some of the parameters that might be confusing for you when changing different options.
$flv_useposter: 0 to disable poster frame, 1 to display poster frame i.e. preview image$flv_posterinfeed: 0 to show text only output in feeds, 1 to display poster frame i.e. preview image in feeds$flv_imagetype: Preview image extension, can be “jpg”, “png” or “gif”$flv_posterpath: Path to poster images, trailing slash required$flv_flvpath: Path to FLV movie files, trailing slash required$flv_backcolor: Background color of the FLV Player *$flv_frontcolor: Texts / buttons color of the FLV Player *$flv_lightcolor: Rollover/ active color of the FLV Player *$flv_screencolor: Background color of the display of the FLV Player *$flv_logo: URL to watermark logo that will be displayed at the bottom right corner$flv_link: URL to go to when the logo is clicked$flv_overstretch: 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.
$flv_largecontrols: 0 to disable, 1 to make the controlbar twice as large for visually impaired users$flv_showdigits: 0 to hide the digits, 1 to show the digits for % loaded, elapsed and remaining time in the FLV Player$flv_showicons: 0 to hide icons, 1 to show the play/loading icon in the middle of the display$flv_showfsbutton: 0 to hide fullscreen button, 1 to show fullscreen button$flv_show_stop: 0 to hide stop button, 1 to show stop button$flv_showvolume: 0 to hide volume button, 1 to show volume button$flv_showcontrolbar: 0 to hide control bar, 1 to show control bar$flv_autostart: 0 to disable autostart, 1 to enable autostart (strongly discouraged as it’s annoying from a user perspective)$flv_bufferlength: Number of seconds an FLV should be buffered ahead before the player starts it$flv_volume: Startup volume for FLV Player
* These settings can be found in fullscreen.php as well which set the player appearance in full screen mode for older Flash users
Installation
- Download and extract the “flv-embed” folder
- Upload the “flv-embed” folder to your WordPress plugin directory, usually “wp-content/plugins”
- Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel
- For video sitemap feature to work properly, you should follow the instruction here
Upgrade
- Deactivate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel
- Remove the “flv-embed” folder in your WordPress plugin directory
- Follow the installation guide above
Download
FLV Embed plugin 1.2.1 for WordPress 2.5+
If you are using older version of WordPress, please download FLV Embed 1.0 from here instead.
| Support high quality yet free plugin by donating, thank you! |
If you like this plugin, express your love by donating and sharing this plugin with your readers!
Support
If you have any questions, suggestions, or found any bugs in this plugin, feel free to post them in your comments. I’ll try my best to answer them but there’s no guarantee, so don’t be disappointed if you do not hear back from me promptly. :/ Always include a URL to the problem page whenever you are asking for help, it will make it easier for me to figure out your problem. Lastly, if you find this plugin useful and feel like donating some money for my effort, please use the PayPal donate button above, thank you! <3
FAQs
I keep getting “Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.” message even though I have the latest Flash player. Why?
It is very likely that wp_head() function is missing in your theme’s header. To fix this, put the following code into your WordPress theme’s header file (usually header.php, under Presentation -> Theme Editor), right before the </head>:
<?php wp_head(); ?>
Why doesn’t my flash video stretch properly?
You need a better encoder, or you can also try different settings for $flv_overstretch option.
Why are those ugly embed code showing up on my category, tags etc. page?
This is because those entries do not have their excerpt defined, and WordPress is trying to generate one for you based on the post content, and you happen to have the FLV embed tags at the top of the page! Unfortunately, I have yet to fix this problem because WordPress does not provide an easy hook for excerpt handling and I would need to literally hack WordPress to get this fixed. I will try to put this on my todo list but in the mean time, you can fix this yourself by manually adding excerpt to those posts affected.
How can I change the location of the logo?
Unfortunately you cannot, by default the logo will show at the top right corner. You might be able to manually add transparent padding to your png logo to shift the logo to where you want it to be, though it is not recommended.
How can I align the video in the middle?
Put the following code into your theme’s stylesheet (for easy way of doing this, see MyCSS):
#player1, #player2, #player3 {text-align: center;}
Is (insert feature name) supported by this plugin?
If you know that a certain feature is supported by JW FLV Player but is not supported by this plugin yet, feel free to make a request. Otherwise, it might be hard for me to provide such functionality especially those related to player’s functionality and appearance.
How can I embed a video from YouTube?
Use the YouTube URL as the file argument when using the embed tags, e.g. [flv:http://youtube.com/watch?v=fLV3MB3DpWN 480 360]
How long will it take for my videos to show up in Google’s search results once I submitted my video sitemap?
Nobody can tell for sure, but Google has definitely started putting video sitemap into action i.e. indexing the flv and including them as search results. Each new video added to the video sitemap can take as little as a day or two to show up in the search results depending on your site’s crawl rate.
I have duplicate/bad entries in my video sitemap?!
Check the post with duplicate entries and manually delete the “flv” custom fields that are either empty or corrupted.
I really like this plugin, what can I do to help?
It will be highly appreciated if you can donate whatever you think this plugin is worth, or you can also spread the love by sharing this hopefully useful plugin with your readers. 
History
1.2 [2009.01.13]
- Fixed: Poster image issues with YouTube embed
1.2 [2008.07.18]
- Upgraded FLV Player to 3.16
- Added: Custom FLV player location support
- Added: YouTube video support
- Added: Google Analytics support
- Added: Video smoothing option
- Added: Show download button option
- Added: Optional raw embed code for RSS
- Changed: Several options in admin panel to be more user friendly
- Fixed: wmode transparency issues
- Fixed: Poster image issues with non FLV files (e.g. mp4)
1.1 [2008.04.22]
- Upgraded FLV Player to 3.14
- Added: New video sitemap appearance
- Added: Auto remove invalid FLV files from custom field during custom field update
- Changed: Admin option panel for WordPress 2.5+
- Fixed: Only published post will be included in the video sitemap
1.0 [2007.12.30]
- Upgraded FLV Player to 3.12
- Added: Admin option panel
- Added: Video sitemap support
- Added: Option to show/hide volume button
- Added: Option to show/hide stop button
- Added: Option to show large control bar for visually impaired users
0.3.2 [2007.05.31]
- Added: Option to show poster image in feeds
0.3.1 [2007.05.19]
- Fixed: Poster path problem
0.3 [2007.05.10]
- Upgraded FLV Player to 3.7
- Switched to SWFObject instead of ufo.js
- Added: Option to show/hide logo with link
- Added: Option to set poster and flv movie path
- Added: Option to show/hide icons
- Added: Option to set volume
- Added: Optional tag parameter for poster path
0.2 [2007.02.16]
- Upgraded FLV Player to 3.5
- Added: Option to show/hide controller bar
- Added: Option to change buffer length
- Added: Option to set overstretch
- Fixed: IE display problem
0.1 [2007.01.09]
- Initial release
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This plugin stopped working since WP 3.x
Does anyone know if there ever is going to be an update?
Hello…
Is there any way to CHANGE the description that the plugin automatically generates? (It seems to capture the first sentence or two from a wordpress post but I would prefer to insert my own description for SEO purposes.)
Great plugin!
Thanks!
Is it possible to have video keywords tags inserted into the videofeed.xml feed via the blog post tags?
If not does anyone know how to do this?
apart from adding tag manually like this:
keyword phrasekeyword phrase 2
Craig
Finally a FLV Player that works with Thesis 1.7.
Great product – Thanks
Omar Taborda
http://www.omartaborda.com
p.s. Donation on the way!
What a great plug :) Took me a minute to figure it out but I got it to work.
Hi im having problems with embedding you tube videos as well. It would be great if this can be fixed. Someone has just recently released a plugin and selling it that can handle youtube vidfeos, mp4 flv etc in wordpress plugin. A bit too much i say at $77 when yours is free or a donation. I mainly need this for you tube embedded videos. Im more hten happy to make a nice donation if the you tube problem can be fixed.
thanks
Thanks for shared this article with us very useful post
thanks for shared your knowledge with us.
Thanks for updating us with the nice information.
Thank you guys for this program. It’s a god-send!
Does this plugin no longer work? I’ve been using it for over a year, but this week it stopped playing embedded YouTube videos. You click the play button, but nothing happens. Any ideas?
Hello. I just spent the last two days working with my hosting provider to try and figure out why that every time I update or submit a post I get a blank screen. Although the post is updates or saved, the blank screen is always showing up.
After 2 days my host discovered that your plug-in is causing a memory leak. I confirmed this when i deactivated the plug-in and stopped getting the blank screen.
Got the blank screen again when I re- activated the plugin.
I tested all the other plug-ins on my site to confirm that it was just your plug-in.
I’m using Version 2.9.2 of WP and have you’re latest update.
Your blog is amazing, i first landed to another post but then get interested and thought, i will just look a little more arround to see what else i can find out about best plugins arround.
Hi,
How can I protect the content so no one can view it from another site and essentially steal my bandwidth?
I basically have a password protected site and I want only people with the password to be able to see it. I also don’t want it turning up in teh search engines or anything.
What can I do?
I have downloaded and unzipped as instructed.
Wordpress 2.9.1 says it wants the file uploaded as a Zip file and won’t accept the unzipped file. Is there a way around this please?
Hi, the plugin works great thanks! I want to embed a video into a wordpress theme widget. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks very much
Please i can´t get the progressbar to work. Doen any one have the same problem? you can see what i’m saying on this page http://iurd.pt/programa-familia-unida-280110/
Love the plugin… really makes life easy. But, recently updated to JW Player 5 and now the stretching features don’t work.
Also, would be great to put in a form field to add other options (like Google PlugIn)… like “so.addVariable(‘plugins’,'gapro-1′);”
THANKS!!
Hello, I find your plugin to be really easy to use and I love the way it works. I am having one problem though and would really appreciate some guidance. When I go to my video posts via the category link, search, or tag link the script tags do not appear so the JavaScript is inserted as text. You can see the issue here http://www.slapmefabulous.com/category/fashion-video/
How can I fix this?
Thank you for your help!
Hey Great plugin.
Any plans to support F4V anytime soon!
Hi, i am using this plugin but i have a problem.
I have setted for see control bar but i can see it but i don’t see the video seeker. I can use PAUSE button, volume button but if i click on seeker bar it replay from 0.
Thanks
Giovanni
I am trying to simply upload videos from my hardrive to my server and have them play on my site. I would like my registered users to be able to do the same thing. So far, all my videos are simply links without any sort of embedding that requests the viewer to download to their local machine. I want the video to be able to play in the browser directly.
I have uploaded the FLV embedded plugin and activated it. However, I am still just getting the option to add the videos as links whenever I try to insert them into posts. Am I missing a step? Can someone help me?
It does not seem to work with wordpress 2.9. I’ve just installed new version and it keep showing the message:
Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.
Although I’ve got the latest version and I’ve checked the header file, which is fine according to your suggestion from FAQ’s. Any ideas?
thank you site :)))
http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/flv-embed/#comment-5838
Hi.. thanks for the plugin. The issue I have is the video (swf) plays does not stop when the video is complete it just repeats itself.
Hi, i love this plugin but i don’t understand why my video sitemap doesnt work. Your plugin built it correctly but google didnt read it.
this is my videosite map http://www.migio.com/videofeed.xml
built 30 days ago and pinged daily, but if you search on video.google.com any term you’ll find anything. BUT if you search for my domain you’ll find a video i uploaded and linked (.avi)
why? :|
thanks ;)
my problem is related to the actual source index.php page.
Can you help. Im really excited about how easy it is meant to be but it does not work for me. Here is the page: http://www.mainstreammaker.com/newmob/?p=1186
here is teh code [flv:http://ecstaticcreation.s3.amazonaws.com/shazziespeaks/SS2 - Medium.flv 500 294] i see nothing on the page. can you tell me what i did wrong or give me all the instructions please.
i am interesting with yourblog,thanks for your share
Hello, is there a forum or place where I can post questions about this plugin? I am reasonably technically savvy but I’m a total newb when it comes to publishing videos using flash and all. I make videos and post them in WMV format now but I like the advantages of using what you have but I am having a nightmare sorting it all out. Where can I go to pose questions? Thanks
thanks for you
This is a great plug-in. I want the most minimal presence on the webpage, and this gives me a lot of control. Is it possible to set background “color” to transparent? Obviously, hex doesn’t allow this, but is there some other way?
Thanks! ………Lane Hall
Having trouble with the poster image. Video play fine. I have located the jpg file in the same directory as the flv file with the same filename. I changed the posterimage parameter from 0 to 1 in flv-embed/flv-embed.php. I still have not preview image. Any suggestions? I am using Wordpress but not the default theme
Thanks.
Pretty obvious that there is no support for this plugin. How can you expect to receive donations?????
i have installed this plugin successful
what can i do for share this video for example share to social networking like facebook?
thank you.
successful but i do not how to make a code when i want to share my video
thx
Hello
Thank you for writing this plug-in, however, after activating it, I do not see a button that would take me to the options page. All I see on the wordpress plug-ins page for your plug-in is deactivate and edit. Is there an options link somewhere else?
Without this information, I can’t really do anything with the plug-in. I have the latest version of Wordpress, downloaded last week 2.8.6. Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you..
Hi: Just downloaded your plugin and trying to figure how to use it…new to wordpress :)
The video path is here: http://stluciaallinclusive.islandfuntime.com/wp-content/uploads/Jade_Mountain_vid.flv
I keep getting these 2 error messages when i preview my post.
empty delimiter in [file path] on line 130
Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by pluggable.php on line 865
That’s awesome! I run a small family blog and I though I would never ever gonna be able to run videos on my website hosted on my server. That plugin is so simple to use that anyone can use it! It’s absolutely brilliant! My child will complain though – as I can’t stop recording him now ;-) So, so, so exciting! Thank you!
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