Q. My video doesn't play in some browsers
A. This should be related to your video format or mime type issues.
Each browser supports different video format, MP4 is the recommended format: http://flowplayer.org/docs/#video-formats
Please note that MP4 is just a container, it might contain various streams for audio and video. You should check if the video stream in your MP4 is using H.264 aka MPEG-4 AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10 codec and if audio is using AAC codec: http://flowplayer.org/docs/encoding.html#codecs
In general, it's recommended to use constant frame rate: http://flowplayer.org/docs/encoding.html#general-advice
It seems HTML5 is more picky about what video it can play.
Q. My video doesn't play in Internet Explorer 9 and 10
A. Most of the issues is caused by bad mime type on the server which serves your video files. Our plugin contains an automated checked for this - visit a post with a MP4 or M4V video as logged in administrator and you will see a warning if the mime type is wrong.
Here's how to fix the mime type:
If your videos are hosted on a standard server:
You need to put the following into your .htaccess:
AddType video/mp4 .mp4
AddType video/webm .webm
AddType video/ogg .ogv
AddType application/x-mpegurl .m3u8
AddType video/x-m4v .m4v
# hls transport stream segments:
AddType video/mp2t .tsThis can be also done in the Apache configuration. If you are on Microsoft IIS, you need to use the IIS manager.
If you host videos on Amazon AWS:
They might be served with bad mime type too - "application/octet-stream". This largely depends on the tool which you use to upload your videos. Using your Amazon AWS Management Console, you can go though your videos and find file content type under the "Metadata" tab in an object's "Properties" pane and fix it to "video/mp4" (without the quotes, of course different video formats need different mime type, this one is for MP4). There are also tools for this, like S3 Browser Freeware, good place for start is here: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=224446
Also for Internet Explorer, it's not recommended to use MPEG-4 Visual or MPEG-4 Part 2 video stream codecs.
Q. Does this plugin support Shoutcast?
A. Unfortunatelly HTML5 does not support live broadcasting. Please read about it here under "Flash. The good parts": http://flowplayer.org/docs/#flash
Q. I get an error message like this when activating the plugin: Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /wp-content/plugins/fv-wordpress-flowplayer/models/flowplayer.php on line 4
A. You need to use at least PHP 5, your site is probably still running on old PHP 4.
Q. I installed the plugin, inserted the video, but it's not working, only a gray box appears.
A. FV Flowplayer calls some javascript from the footer. That means your footer.php file must contain the <?php wp_footer(); ?> Wordpress hook. Almost all themes do this out of the box, but if you've customised your theme there's a chance that you might have deleted this call.
Q. You player works just fine, but there are some weird display issues.
A. Please check if these issues also appear when using the default Wordpress template. There seems to be some sort of conflict between the Flowplayer CSS and your theme CSS.
Q. How to make this plugin WPMU compatible?
A. Just copy the plugin into wp-content/plugins and then activate it on each blog where you want to use it.
Q. Is there a way to force pre-buffering to load a chunk of the video before the splash screen appears?
A. This option is not available. With autobuffer, it means every visitor on every visit to your page will be downloading the video. This means that you use a lot more bandwidth than on demand. I know that I actually watch the video on only about 1/3 of the pages with video that I visit. That saves you money (no bandwidth overages) and means that people who do want to watch the video and other visitors to your site get faster performance.
If you want to autobuffer, you can turn that on in the options (we turn it off by default and recommend that it stays off).
Q. My videos are hosted with Amazon S3 service. How can I fill the details into shortcode?
A. Just enter the URL of your video hosted on Amazon S3 as the video source.
Q. I would like to localize the play again button.
A. Currently there is no support for other languages. Some localizations for Flowplayer exists, but there is no official support from flowplayer.org.
Q. Where can I change the default directory for videos?
A. You can change this manually in the the models/flowplayer.php in the flowplayer_head function. It you use videos in widgets you might need to edit the function flowplayer_content in controller/frontend.php as well. Please be carefull when editing source codes.
Q. How do I insert flowplayer object outside the post, for example to a sidebar?
A. You need to use following code to include the shortcode into a sidebar:
echo apply_filters('the_content', '[flowplayer src=yourvideo.mp4 width=240 height=320]');
Fill the Flowplayer shortcode part according to your needs. The apply filter needs to be called because the flowplayer shortcodes are not parsen outside posts automatically. Also, please do not forget to add the echo at the beginning.
Q. How can I style the popup?
A. Check out .wpfp_custom_popup in /fv-wordpress-flowplayer/css/flowplayer.css. You might want to move your changes to your template CSS - make sure you use ID of container element, so your declarations will work even when the flowplayer.css is loaded later in the head section of your webpage.
Q. My videos are taking long time to load.
A.
- Check your hosting for download speed.
- Try to use different settings when encoding the videos, try to turn on the cache when encoding with Quick Time
Q. Is it possible to loop the video?
A. No at the moment we do not support looping.
Q. How do I insert videos in playlist?
A. Playlist feature is not supported right now.
Q. How can I change the play icon?
A. You need to copy the CSS from the Flowplayer CSS (default theme) and put it into your theme CSS. Also add some element ID in front of it to make sure it overridsed the default Flowplayer CSS:
#content .is-paused.flowplayer .fp-ui{background:url({PATH TO YOUR IMAGE}.png) center no-repeat;background-size:12%;}
#content .is-rtl.is-splash.flowplayer .fp-ui, #content .is-rtl.is-paused.flowplayer .fp-ui{background:url({PATH TO YOUR IMAGE-rtl}.png) center no-repeat;background-size:12%}
@media (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2){
#content .is-splash.flowplayer .fp-ui, #content .is-paused.flowplayer .fp-ui{background:url({PATH TO YOUR IMAGE@2x}.png) center no-repeat;background-size:12%}
#content .is-rtl.is-splash.flowplayer .fp-ui, #content .is-rtl.is-paused.flowplayer .fp-ui{background:url({PATH TO YOUR IMAGE-rtl@2x}.png)}
}The image needs to be 100x106px normal version nad 200x212px hi res version. You only have to include the RTL version if your site runs in such language.
Q. Volume control in player looks weird
A. Make sure you are not using obsolete tags like <center> to wrap the video. Such tag is not supported in HTML5, you have to use CSS to center elements.
Q. What if the FV Flowplayer 5 doesn't work for me?
A. No worries.
- You can always downgrade to version the Flash version (here's how). You do lose a lot of mobile and iOS capability but you didn't have it in the first place.
- Contact us via support. We are actively investigating and fixing people's sites now during the initial release period. We will help you to get FV Flowplayer 5 working in your environment.
FV Flowplayer 5 Pro comes with a money back guarantee so you can even try the commercial no-branding version risk free. Or make it work first with the free versions.
Thank you for being part of the HMTL 5 mobile video revolution!
