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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Great! Thanks for the tip!
An informative read… thanks for the post.
Great plugin!!! Is there a way to set the autoplay function for SOME of the FLV movies and not all of them? Ie. Is there something I can type between the square referencial brackets that tells their browser to automatically play the movie?
Thanks!!
Luke
Hi there, any chance you know how to upload a .swf file with a menu?
Hi
Is it possible to insert a video in a custom field, so I can display it somewhere outside the normal content.
Cool plugins! Thanks!! I was wondering..can I use this also for a personal blog? :D 10x!!
how to call external function on play and pause?
Thank you.. subscribe!))
Hello! Great Extension! Thanks!
I use the Tube Theme WP4Tube ( http://www.freewptube.com/category/tube-theme ). With this I can insert videos only with embedded codes in the custom field “video_code”.
How can I insert a custom field for my template to run flv urls (example
http://hustlershare.com/webmasters/www.hustler.com/uaa_alysa_clip02.flv ) ?
thanks!
Greets,
ronny
Can I disable logo overlay and fullscreen for specific video player?
I have a hate-love relation with this plugin. Coz I can see that none of the comments ever gets the response from the creator of this plugin, and that the plugin was upgraded last in 2009 :(
But anyways i had to express my gratitude so thank you for this great plugin. It still beats the hell out of the best commercial plugins out there. Though i sincerely hope that you will be upgrading it soon with some of the features people have requested here.
Cheers – Bunty Gurung.
Hi and thanks for the plugin. just a simple question: how to put it in a widget in the column?
thanks
Curro
I have installed the plugin FLV embed for my wordpress site, and on the post where I put the code (for those familiar) [flv:"file location" 320 240] etc, the video shows up when I click on the indivual posting, but not on the main page which is where the posting is at the top.
Flv Player
Hi John,
I just checked your site out (very nice site) and I see you have the video on the home page but I could not get it to play. I then checked your source code and could see that you clearly have not added this plugin to your site nor the video code.
I am not connected to this site at all as a matter of fact I made a donation and was never even thanked but none of that really matters to me because I have access to this easy solution for adding videos to my sites and even more importantly perfectly crafted video sitemaps and it cost me nothing so I was more than happy to make a donation and I plan to give even more.
Being that your site promotes your own video player I would have to presume that your comment is nothing less than a spam comment added for the sole purpose of luring readers to your site.
When I saw your question I was sincerely going to offer my help, I am certainly no expert but I have added this plugin to at least a dozen sites so far without one issue so I thought that if I could share my knowledge I would do so to pay back for the free product I have received.
However I was disappointed to see that I was in fact lured to your site under the guise of someone in need of help. The truly ironic part of this whole charade is that you are promoting your own video software and yet the demo video you have on your site does not even play!
I think there is a name for something like this……..Got It! it is called “Karma”
Best of luck to you my friend!
Sincerely,
Howard
As I said I am not associated with this site in anyway I just truly appreciate the generosity of the site owner.
Hi Howard,
I do checked the site that you John has mentioned. It is good and the video also plays well, Howard it is rather playing well for me. I think there is some problem with the net connectivity for Howard. I do have a chance to chat with the support team there. They seems to be knowledgeable. You could try to contact them too. Think it would work.
Hi Charles,
I don’t think you understood the point I was trying to make. His site obviously is a dynamic site because it you click on his little FLV Player link at the bottom of his post you will now see that it is a different home page and it shows a video framework but it is a slide show that is playing and not a video.
Putting all that to the side the thing that bothers me is that he posted a comment on this site that offers us ALL a FREE plugin that works terrific and he is complaining about this plugin but he is only doing so in efforts to promote his own video product.
I just think we should show our gratitude to this site owner for giving us a FREE piece of software that works terrific and not support any comments that are only being left so they can promote their own video software.
Do you understand my point?
I am very thankful that this plugin is being offered to us for free and I have gone so far as to make a couple of donations to show my gratitude.
Now do you think John is going to offer of his video software for FREE?
Sincerely,
Howard
Hi,
I think this is an awesome plugin. I have been using it for about a month and a half and I have it pretty well figured out.
I just really wanted to thank you for offering such a great piece of software. I know it is not very much but I just made a donation of $30 through PayPal
I will do the same next month.
Thanks Again!
Sincerely,
Howard
Thanks for a nice lightweight video plugin. Been having major issues with other plugins where the video sits above all other layers, including my drop down menus. Nice to see you have this covered!
Great work!
Would be awesome if you can do some sort of playlist feature. Would be willing to pay/donate as it would be the only thing available for wordpress. Thanks!
Is there a way to get the FLV to preload, so when the user presses play it starts as the whole movie is already buffered?
We are not able to get the Video tracking to track in Google Analytics. Inside the FLV Embed Settings I picked Google Analytics (GA) as the Analytics to use, but I am not seeing any data in GA. How do i go about fixing this?
I’m working locally at the moment. Sorry to seem stupid, but I don’t know where to start with your plugin. I can’t see anything about how to start and insert the movie. Could you help please? I have the FLV Options page, but how do I get my movie?
Apologies
Pete
iam not sure why my images are not showing …..can you please help me ill even give you the password to the site thank you.
Is there any way of using FLV Embed outside the loop? I’ve tried instantiating it using do_shortcode() but it just returns the value inside.
hi, i got a question for you, how i can add an alt tag to a video?
thanks in advance for your help.
Hi,
I just started using this plugin and I will definitely be donating. The Web Traffic Genius guys selling Video Traffic Genius claim their plugin is the only plugin ever to create video sitemaps so with that in mind it is well worth donating $50 – $75 for this one.
Being new to adding video to Wordpress I do have a few questions. I have successfully uploaded 3 videos to my Child Safety site but what I have done is use Applian FLV Freecorder to capture youtube videos and convert them to .FLV but the video looks pretty plain so I used another program that creates an .FLV player with a number of skin choices.
My first question: Do you guys load all your videos into one folder or do you just FTP them to the root. I have uploaded 3 videos to my root and I name the videos the keyword of my post.
Ex: video name Child-Safety-Seats.flv so the video URL would be:
http://www.mydomain.com/Child-Safety-Latches.flv which I thought would be the best for SEO and the sitemap but my concern; is it ridiculous to upload more than 5, 10 or 20 videos on one site because they are anywhere from 5 to 15 million bytes each.
I also have the same post in the sitemap more than once and I only have one embed tag in the post and I don’t know how to delete the extra listings.
I guess that is enough ?s for now.
Thanks for any help from anyone!
Sincerely,
Howard
I deleted the plugin and reinstalled it and it’s fine now!!
Jenny
I have a real problem with my videos not showing up. I’ve never had this problem before. I have another site where they’re showing up fine and I checked and have the same plugins in both sites. What can I do?
Thanks,
Jenny
Not sure if this plug-in has been updated. I was told about it and have gone thru the instructions, but can someone please tell me 1.) Is this plug-in updated? and 2.) It seems to me that there should be an option that would appear on each post or page when you are writing the post…and option that would add the video by simply making the selection on that post. Instead, as I understand it and tried it, you have to put one small line of code into the post (no big deal–but you have to remember this each time). Is there a difference in using this plug-in, or simply by adding the video using the WP upload feature? Many thanks, and I will use this plug-in if indeed it is better!!
how can i see the option panel in this emed
In my WP version it’s in the vertical menu on the left under Settings / FLV Embed
Hi, let me tell you this plugin is realy helpful!
Dont you think about option in setting “default hight x width”? So u dont have to write size into code everytime? :)
Thnx Tom
Looks like it’s broken in Wordpress 3.1 :(
Firefox 3.6.6 Log:
Error: syntax error
Source file: http://www.war59312.com/archives/2006/05/13/nintendo_will_preview_video/
Line: 1, Column: 65
Source code:
/*<![CDATA[*/document.getElementById("player1").style.display="";var s1=new SWFObject(“http://www.war59312.com/wp-content/plugins/flv-embed/flvplayer.swf”,”player1″,”480″,”380″,”7″);s1.addParam(“wmode”,”transparent”);s1.addParam(“allowscriptaccess”
Hi again,
I think I know what the problem is. I have windows 7 ie 8 64 bit and I currently can’t run in 32 bit. .swf will not work in 64 bit. Is there a way to change the code for flv embed to fun .flv rather than .swf Thank you
Hey there,
I have installed flv embed in my wordpress site. When I click build video sitemap in video site map, I get “No custom field data found!”. In flv embed I checked sitemap and display poster. Custom location of FLV player is flv:http://toreducehips.com/wp-content/uploads/video/VNDVideo-1.swf. The player does not update as well. The video is uploaded to my server under said path and there is an image named VNDVideo-1.jpg in video folder. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you
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