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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Is there a way to align it to text, ie: If I want an small video at the right side of the text, such as the images in WP?
I agree with Kevin, I install this plugin and dont see anything.
THis s**cks. I come here seeking a solution to post videos to my wordpress blog without hosting them somewhere else. Simple, right?????? No I get here and the first thing this site says is “FLV Embed is a WordPress plugin made to simplify the process of adding Flash videos (FLV) into your blog using Jeroen’s FLV Player.”
WTF??? No further info about the player, no instructions how to accomplish my simple goal, either at this site or at Jereon’s. Can some decent business people please get into this space? Calling all Micro_ISV’s!
Happy to find FLV Embed plug-in for WP.
Looking forward to implement it at my website.
Thanks!
Hi
I have a question Why if I click the logo it does not goes to the link I have set it up for it? instead it stop/play the video What I’m doing wrong?
Beside that it is a great plugin ;)
Thanks for the plugin I was finally able to get it to work witnh my amazon s3 account but for some reason the video controls will not stop the sound.
When I press th pause button the video continous to play and if I press the stop button the videostops but the sound carries on.
Any advice? I am doing this on my ebayvideo training site http://auctiontrainingvideos.com/optin.html/20-list-an-auction-on-ebay-part-2/
Lance
Is there a way to change the .php file to reduce the amount of space that occurs below the player when inserted into a post? I looked and tried changing a few of the **px numbers, but that didn’t help. Thanks for your help.
Just to let you know; the “Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.” message with a lot of mumbo jumbo behind it will appear wherever you use the_excerpt() instead of the_content in your theme. Just spent the better part of an hour to find this out.
Just want to say thanks for the plugin! It has been a great tool for me to use on my website!
I love your plugin and i want to continue using it. However, there is something wrong with the display dimesions when I insert the shortcode into wordpress. It appears to be adding extra space to the width, which then pushes the logo over to the right by about 30 pixels and the control bar of the player is moved down about 5-10 pixels.
The crazy thing is, when I’m in Firebug and I change the width and height under the embed tag ( i don’t even change them! I just increase it by one px, then decrease it back to the original!) it fits it into the correct dimensions of the player…
Have you had this issue? Do you have any idea what is causing it? How can I fix it? Its wasn’t always this way.
Like I said I want to keep usiing your plugin, but if I have to replace shortcodes in my database, I’d rather do it now before it gets too big…
Thanks!
{text-align: center;} stopped working in FireFox (3.6.13) Any way to get this to work again?
Intresting article i came to know more about FLV Embed plugin. Thanks for sharing!
Hello,
This is an excellent plugin! I can’t believe you give it away for free. (:
Anyway, I was wondering if you could help me with a small coding change. I’m PHP-challenged so for some reason I can’t figure it out on my own. What I want to do is make the build video sitemap feature grab a different version of the permalink. For example, if my page url is currently http://www.mydomain.com/category/postname/year I want the URL for that page to be listed on the video sitemap as something different (but still link to the same page). So I’d want something like http://www.mydomain.com/?p=123, or something like that.
I thought that I could just change get_permalink to get_shortlink in the code but that causes an error.
The reason I want to do this is because Google will give you a double listing in the search results if you use two different URLs for the same page (one listing for your video, and one for the normal text version listing). With the current setup of the plugin, once Google indexes your video sitemap pages it replaces your original text listing with the video listing instead of letting you keep both of them in the search results.
It would be great if you could help me figure out how to get the $loc to grab something other than the same URL that’s used for the text listing in Google.
Thanks for your time!
Best,
Patrick
PS – If this sounds confusing let me know and I’d be glad to clarify.
How can we reduce memory use of Flv embed plugin on our server?
Does it work with opcode?
Good plugin! But I notice that when I click on Archives, the result shows “Get the latest Flash Player to see this player. [Javascript required to view Flash movie, please turn it on and refresh this page] document.getElementById(“player1″).style.display = “”; var s1 = new SWFObject(“http://www.lindaslenses.com/Blog/wp-content/plugins/flv-embed/flvplayer.swf”,”player1″,”650″,”385″,”7″); s1.addParam(“wmode”,”transparent””
Is this a fault of the theme? If not, is there a way to eliminate it?
Really good guide.
Share a free flash video player named PPlayer with all, I used it in my WordPress based website and it works well for HTML page too, it’s pretty easy – need not coding & programing knowledge, just click, copy and paste.
you can view the details from: http://www.gotelement.com/home/flash-video-player/160-pplayer20.html
free flash video player – pplayer2.0
hope it is useful for all.
Hi there. I desperately wanna put video on my site and would love to use your player, but i am not a techie and need a little help. is there anywhere that i can get step by step instructions on how to get this working. I have downloaded and activated the plugin but do not know how to get the video on my site from there. for instance, where it says “path to FLV directory” what is suppose to go there or “custom location of flv player” what goes there?? how do i tell the pluging what video i want to play. this is all new to me and i realize this may be very easy questions to answer. I just need someone to show me step by step once and i’ll be good to go i have a flash video ready to go. please help and i will be happy to make a nice donation thanks
Dave
uuu this is real cool, working only on wordpress or also on blogger or movable type?
Hi i want to play my video player. But couldn’t. For examle my video player http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/_player/player.swf have can i do
hi
i have tried to upload a flv file on my blog, which is successfuly in the upload folder but as you can see is not showing the player in my home page. please help
How would I embed this using your plugin?
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
Not showing up go to this website and video embed code not working. This is not my site I would like to embed a video from this site using their embed snippet
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=7950266
How would I embed this code:
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
Thanks in advance
thanks for pulgin
i put it in my blog and its nice
sitemap video not show…
I do define url?
Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write it! :)
thank you, you really help me in my new games site
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I like your plugin and all of it’s intended functionality..
I did come across two rather large problems though.
1. The custom fields data flv is not corresponding to what is actually in the blog.
I embedded a youtube video,, my player plays it, but the site-map lists video/demo.flv for a video file
2. the entry shows three times in the database even though only ONE embed exists and only in one post.
one entry is postmeta is empty two are assigned the mentioned video/demo.flv instead of the YT video.
Can you give me some pointers here.
Your script is the closest one that came to how I think this should be done by the way. Thank you.
I’ve enjoyed the FLV script for a while now, it’s great and easy to use. However, I noticed today that it no longer seems to work on Safari browser 5.0.2. Do you think there may be a chance for an update? Or is there something in the code that may correct it … I listed my site as an example for you to see how the video on the right does not load, it’s just a white box.
Огромное спасибо! Замечательный плагин! Очень нужный. Красиво и грамотно написан – вполне профессионально! Я восхищен.
HI
i want to thank you for the google sitemap feature of the player – its awesome.
but i also have a question concerning xml.playlists – i used to load a playlist
[flv:wp-content/video/Hedykomm/komm.xml / 480 360 ]
but it didnt work – could u help?
Great plugin it still works with 3.0 !!
Is there a widget for this plugin or php code to place in the sidebar..?
Thank you. This plugin is fantastic. However, I am having an incredibly hard time trying to get my video sitemap to work. I have thesis for my theme and have no idea how to fix it so I can get the description to not read:
“Get the latest Flash Player to see this player. [Javascript required to view Flash movie, please turn it on and refresh this page] document.getElementById(“player1″).style.display = “”; var s1 = …”
and get the poster for the video correct. I know I am supposed to edit the header.php file but I do not know where to even look.
If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.
Kevin, I’m having the same problem. Anybody have a fix for this?
when you first add text then video, it automatically takes text from your blog post and add it as sitemap description
Thanks for excellent blog. Just use your tricks on FAFSA123.com for front page video.
Your site is beautiful!
hello
I love your plugin and I try use it with wordpress 3 multi site
but it doesn’t work well
can you please add support for wordpress multisite ?
thank you
How do I incorporate the number of video views into my google analytics?
Hi,
I have a problem with the buffer. I enabled the option but the complete movie loads befor it plays. Can somebody help me?
Now works . I set the path of the thumbnails and the below code works :
[flv:http://www.archive.org/download/mwyshs_pathi/pathologia_mwyshs.flv mwyshs_pathi.jpg 480 390]
At my wordpress site , when i insert the post parameter i dont see the embeded video.
[flv:http://www.archive.org/download/mwyshs_pathi/pathologia_mwyshs.flv http://www.ka8odon.com/videos/mwyshs_pathi.jpg 480 390] <—– DONT WORKS
[flv:http://www.archive.org/download/mwyshs_pathi/pathologia_mwyshs.flv 480 390] <—– WORKS
How can resolve this problem ?
Hi
i’m writing [flv:test.flv 480 368] on a custom fields “video”
In my template :
once this done, i’ve got in firefox : [flv:test.flv 480 368]
As if wordpress don’t generate the embed-flv… i’ve missed something ?
I use FLV Embed with Wordpress 3.0.1 and it works wonderful. The only problem I have is that I can’t change the width and the height of the FLV movie. If I change “480 360″ to bigger measurements, the movie doesn’t appear in my post. I would like to change it to “568 355″ to fit better with the design of my blog. Does anybody knows how to solve it?
I would like to know how to center the video to the center of the page
love the plug in, is there a way to have the video maintain a loop? I would like to have the video keep playing until someone stops it.
is there an option to auto loop the video when it completes?
This plugin stopped working since WP 3.x
Does anyone know if there ever is going to be an update?
I am having the same issue. Hope there is a fix coming soon
We have a licensed version of the player, and access to skins.
How do I use one of the skins so we can customize the player?
Thanks!
Hi, not sure if you read this it all. This plugin was recently hacked on my site! It was injected with some sort of code. Can you maybe update the plugin? No idea if that helps
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
Holy Crap,
I can’t even get this plugin to SHOW. I installed it in plugins, it’s their, all of it’s setting show up, except I don’t know where it’s BUTTON is. When I create a post and want to insert Flash from my files, WHERE IS IT?
How come everyone seems to be able to see it but me?
How do I get it in my POSTS? Does it have a special button, because I don’t see JACK in my post area in my dashboard, or even in my ;kitchen sink’ display.
I’m so frustrated. It’s installed, it’s in my ’settings’, so how the F*** do I use it?
Please help, I’m freakin begging here.
I’ve been using the plugin for over a year with only one minor problem.When i view the above page with Internet Explorer, IE claims “Error on Page.” If I ask for details, I am told, “Object doesn’t support this property or method.”
The page works fine. But the error message makes the site look unprofessional. Any suggestions?
Hi!,
I want to ask you a favor, I’m designing my blog but I don’t undestand where to insert the piece of code that runs the FLV plugin. Could you help me sending an example to see how can I insert my video in my site home page. I’ll thank you in advance and I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks again.
My best regards
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