Forum Replies Created
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Hi John,
We looked at the ad skipping mechanism – you can see a demo here. Effectively we tell you how long the ad is but not how long until skipping. We’ll switch that around and have just a countdown to a skip button like YouTube. That might affect people who don’t want to allow skipping ads adversely but it’s a convention these days to allow ad skipping.
Martin, if there is no skip time, the countdown should show the full ad playback time on an ad (“Your video will start in xx seconds”). xx = the playback time.
Thanks.
John, we have little interest in helping our publishers make spammy sites with ads without countdown. I can’t imagine how annoying it is to be trapped by an ad with no controlbar and no way to know how long it will take for the ad to be over.
If you want to inflict this on your users, you’ll have to modify your CSS file. Any further help on this issue will require a pro support incident.
6 years ago in reply to: animated titlesHi Neil,
The audio player is mainly there now as a convenience to video publishers who have the occasional audio file to publish to their site to avoid having to use two plugins.
If audio is a core component of your site, there are really full-featured audio plugins out there. I’m afraid if we get started with deeply customising the audio player we’ll be thrown off our core missions: to be the most feature rich and easiest to use video publishing solution for WordPress.
Hi Cat,
We’re happy to slowly track down the issue with you in case it’s related to FV Player and not the other software on your site. If you are looking for web development help figuring out what’s gone wrong with your site, please book a pro support incident. In that case, we’ll log in and track down the issue ourselves without your active participation.
Thanks.
Hi egghead,
Thanks for the bug report.
We won’t be backdating support prior to Firefox 49. We have enough compatibility issues on our plate with almost annual major version updates to iOS and Android.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
PS. Juraj, please document this on a compatibility page as a known issue. Thanks.
6 years ago in reply to: User BookmarksMartin, thanks for the detailed info about caching. As we’ve discussed, I’d like to stop using these very inefficient WordPress conventions, particularly as a platform agnostic FV Player is coming.
6 years ago in reply to: iphone audio-playlist issueHi Artur,
I’m very sorry but if you cannot replicate the issue and get us an exact page with an exact iPhone model, we cannot take this investigation any further.
We will keep our eyes open for any similar reports from other publishers who hopefully will be able to give us more detailed information on the failure.
Again, we’d be happy to get more information from you about the issue any time in the future.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
6 years ago in reply to: VIMEO link not loading the FV PlayerThanks for the report Sebastian. Our team will work through your issue tomorrow and let you know what we find by the end of the day European time tomorrow.
6 years ago in reply to: Using AWS MediaConvert with FolioVisionHi Hoshang,
AWS setup is difficult. We offer very detailed documentation to help you with DIY. We are unable to troubleshoot AWS setup hands off though or we’d have to stop developing FV Player completely just to offer free support to Amazon.
We do have several services to help you with AWS setup. Feel free to book the one which suits your needs best. For Elastic Transcoder, it’s necessary to have working Cloudfront first.
Let us know if we can be of assistance.
6 years ago in reply to: Play Button Icon on Play Bar is a SquareMartin, we really must simplify this redeployment/change process. Expecting users to resave their settings is unrealistic. My suggestion would be that FV Player keeps track of its version. If it detects a change it either auto-resaves settings itself or prompts any admin user to do so until it’s done.
6 years ago in reply to: User BookmarksHi John,
We are working on viewer watch history. Adding bookmarks storage functionality and interface is very specialised. If you’d like to sponsor the feature, be in touch. Part of the deployment would require making changes to your theme to add a place to store these bookmarks.
6 years ago in reply to: Border appearing using LightboxMartin, I’d prefer we focused on disabling theme lightbox technology and imposing our own lightbox everywhere. If the publisher wishes to manually troubleshoot his/her own lightbox, then that’s an additional development burden for that publisher to carry. Trying to sneak in the back door by checking pages and just disabling occasionally will make lightbox conflicts complex and random. I don’t want that.
6 years ago in reply to: Issue with Live Stream on IE / Windows 10Hey Alex,
How is it going with AWS? We’d like to be sure your issue is sorted.
Let us know.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Making the web work for you, Alec
6 years ago in reply to: New AB Loop DesignThanks for your interest and the suggestion John. Your example is easy to use but doesn’t pass modern design standards. Our new AB loop isn’t much different but should basically work the same and look better.
You’re right – keyboard shortcuts are really the way to get precise cuts. That’s what video editors use for exact cuts: listen and then hit a key.
6 years ago in reply to: Strange category redirectionHi Saif,
If you’d like us to troubleshoot your website, please book a pro support incident.
6 years ago in reply to: Integration with RCPHi Andrew,
Juraj is not quite right here. I’m the original plugin creator. What is correct is that we recommend EDD for Pay Per View over RCP. We did have a PPV RCP setup at one point as we really like RCP but found it was a bit counter-intuitive in the long run to manage.
FV Player still integrates with RCP for membership sites and it’s brilliant for that. We set up full membership sites as a service, including RCP licensing within the price.
We have an EDD/WooCommerce module on the drawing board for PPV but it’s not ready yet for simple download and installs. Customers are using it actively when we’ve set it up for them. PPV custom setup is $500 right now with us both installing and troubleshooting the feature on your site.
Let me know if you would like our team to set up PPV for your site.
Thanks, Alec
6 years ago in reply to: How can I stop the player to load cast_senderHi Bruno,
There’s not much data going out with this call. I.e. an IP address requested the Chromecast library. If you’d like, you can have your developer create a local version or you could engage us to write that for you. The investment would be $200 (below cost, but I’m not against adding this to the plugin if a user feels strongly enough to participate in the improvement).
Best wishes, Alec
6 years ago in reply to: VAST and AMP compatibilityHi Pranav,
AMP is a Google standard so they are very fussy about what advertising they let through. If it’s possible to add AMP to our VAST we’ll do it.
Do you have some examples for us of other VAST plugins or CMS which do work within AMP?
6 years ago in reply to: Can I use FV player outside WordPressHi Mllauce,
We’re planning a generic PHP version. We could probably set you up with encrypted videos now in a PHP framework.
Would that work for you?
6 years ago in reply to: Can I use FV player outside WordPressHello Mllauce,
Depending on the functionality you require some of FV Player already does work as a freestanding project. As Lucia noted, more support is forthcoming.
What are you trying to accomplish?
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for your note.
Google’s demands on information required to index videos are somewhat unreasonable (Google have tightened them up due to spammers submitting huge sitemaps with video promised but no videos there). Each video has to be downloaded and stored by Google individually. If it’s done wrong, all of a site’s videos will be viewable directly on Google and on a specific URL, making it possible for a hacker to guess a site’s video addresses and download and pirate all the content.
After some tests, we’ve determined membership protected pages and their videos are fairly safe as Google won’t be able to index them at all.
What needs to be done to keep other spiders out of a site’s videos is reverse DNS lookup when Google comes calling, i.e. Google’s spiders will be allowed to view and download these files but others won’t. This is fairly challenging and cannot be done at the player level. It would require some custom configuration of both the web server and the cache plugin not to delay page load times substantially.
As membership videos are protected, I can see this as a less important security issues as we first apprehended. We will make advanced site map indexing available sometime in April (we have a very heavy workload). If you’d like to accelerate this work to next week with a development contribution of $100, we’d be happy to oblige you. You would be the first to get the feature and have our personal troubleshooting on your site until it’s working right for you. Of course the commercial value of this much work is more like $500 but as it will make the player better in the long run and your site is an informational one not particularly commercial, I’m able to make you this special offer for accelerated development.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Making the web work for you, Alec
PS. As Martin noted, the issue with the video sitemap no longer working has to do with changes which Vimeo made to their default video formats which made it impossible for Google to determine if the videos are really there.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
6 years ago in reply to: Clone Screen options & GutenbergBrilliant notes Tony. We’re not Gutenberg supporters and have a very busy dance card right now. If you find someone who could add that code to FV Clone Screen Options, we’d be happy to include it though in the main plugin. The plugin is on GitHub on our Foliovision.com account.
Let me know if you have a coder who can do this work competently so we’ll be sure to merge and release it quickly.
Thanks! Alec
6 years ago in reply to: Clone Screen options & GutenbergHi Tony,
Thanks for letting us know about the Gutenberg issues. Feel free to post some more information if you have it. We’re working hard on FV Player these days but we use and love our FV Clone Screen Options too.
6 years ago in reply to: Amazon S3 Browser is not loadingThanks for error report with screenshot Maxim. We’ll get this solved for you ASAP.
6 years ago in reply to: Video Sitemap For Post Format Style?Hi Deirdre,
As far as I know WordPress retired post formats in 3.6. We’re unlikely to support advanced sitemap capabilities for deprecated features at this point.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
6 years ago in reply to: Playbar – Hide on paused videoHi Devin,
Player appearance right now is a moving target. We’re working on adding more functionality to the timeline and some options in terms of how and where the timeline appears will turn up soon (next three or four months).
We deeply appreciate your feedback and will keep it in mind while we develop the next generation interface.
This is a great suggestion, Peter. We will support Amazon Media Convert if possible. It may take us a couple of months to get there though as we are still working through major improvements via the database and WordPress 5 changes as well as a huge custom project.
6 years ago in reply to: Jump back or forward 10 secondsHi Artur,
Thanks for the thoughtful feature suggestions!
I could certainly imagine adding a quick rewind button. Would you be able to contribute €200 for its immediate development? This would also include mobile.
Otherwise as Martin points out, there is some keyboard support.
Cordial regards,
Alec
6 years ago in reply to: Pre-roll ads are not showing on loopLibby, I find the ads between each repeat on loop really oppressive. Between varied playlist items it makes more sense to me.
Why do you want to try to show many ads on a looped video? Who will want to watch so many ads just to see a looped video?
The way we handle it is to build custom admin sections based on templates. It works quite nicely. WordPress is really on the wrong path. Instead of building a better CMS, Mullenweg is chasing the customers around waving Tumbler clones (post types, since retired) and Medium clones (Gutenberg impossible post editing) in their faces like some Pied Piper of Stupidity and Trendiness.
I don’t think in the history of open source there’s been any leader of an important open source project who’s managed to do as much damage to the open source movement as Matt Mullenweg.
Hi Twig,
That’s very helpful. We discourage use of page builders on serious websites. Inevitably they interfere with core functionality and cause publishers no end of issues which would be avoided by building standard template files instead.
Page builders have their uses on experimental sites or small scale sites where a full custom design would be overkill. Even then, I’d recommend buying a good (and simply coded) theme without a built-in page builder. I’ve been building and maintaining WordPRess sites with both modest and millions/views for so long that my view is all about performance and stability.
Anything a publishers to do improve page load speed and reduce maintenance is a long term blessing. Getting rid of page builders is the single biggest possible step in the direction of stability and performance.
Cheers, Alec
6 years ago in reply to: New lightbox doesn’t work on my websiteHi David,
I really dislike the idea of selectively loading scripts. That’s a support nightmare. If a publishers chooses not to use FV Player Video Lightbox (due to their own tastes or a conflict with an out of date Fancybox js), then the publisher only needs to disable the FV Player Video Lightbox.
What I’d like to do on our end, is make it easier to handle these Fancybox issues. There’s no reason for three versions of a single library to load (and every performance reason not to do it), even if with a different prefix.
Martin and I will work on reducing the Fancybox conflicts.
Our plugin is too complicated already. We have to simplify, not make it even more complex.
Thanks though for the detailed notes. Martin will work with you on resolving this Fancybox compatibility issue.
6 years ago in reply to: Vimeo AlbumsHi Martin,
We should really add support for albums as well if it’s at all possible.
Thanks, Alec
Hi E,
No is the answer. We do not promise privacy on our public forums. Indeed these are public forums and what you post here belongs to Foliovision. We do remove identifying information where appropriate.
Feel free to choose other software and go with a closed forum type unhelpful big company who could care less about you, your website or videos. We’re an open source company who believe in making the web better and not hoarding secrets.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Alec
- This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
Hi Anonymous,
The way we create this great documentation is by helping one another and that means publishing support discussions like this one.
I firmly believe in public forums for software (almost all vendors have hidden support now – I find that very destructive and self-interested).
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Alec
Hi Anonymous,
The way we create this great documentation is by helping one another and that means publishing support discussions like this one.
I firmly believe in public forums for software (almost all vendors have hidden support now – I find that very destructive and self-interested).
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Alec
Hi Catherine,
I’m afraid this is web development not support. We’re happy to send you or your developer to the correct documentation or fix any bugs but we can’t build or troubleshoot your website for you (well we can but it would be a separate deal).
With Pro Support we’ll log in and give you some first hand tips or a quick fix. Pro Support does not replace a web developer.
Thanks. Alec
6 years ago in reply to: Shortcodes in Custom PopupsHi John,
Martin’s right. Adding shortcode to the HTML pop-ups would mostly not work (it’s in the middle of a complex structure which means HTML and CSS needs to be customised for the environment) and be an ongoing support nightmare.
If it’s a form you want to put up, you should just be able to include the form code itself.
Cheers, Alec
6 years ago in reply to: ads htmlHi Fabio,
For us to take the next step and provide hands on troubleshooting for customer sites, it’s necessary to pick up a pro support incident first.
Here’s the link. We’ll collect your credentials during the pro support incident purchase.
Thanks, Alec
6 years ago in reply to: Progress bar preview ala YouTubeHi Radimetry,
Thanks a lot for your feedback.
We’ll replace the pointing finger across the video with an arrow, that’s a great idea. We like the vertical bar with dual arrows when on the progress bar and volume as those are modified by dragging left and right. Those are the only two places that a user gets that symbol.
We’re keen to improve our skins though so we’re open to ongoing suggestions. We’ll be making some big improvements to AB roll for instance (twin thin matching timelines above and below the control bar), based on user feedback.
Cordial regards,
Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Demo: Video Player with DurationHi Mdamion,
Thanks for your note.
This is custom web development dependent on what membership system you use.
Once you have a membership system in place, we’d be happy to set this up for $500 or we could include setting up our own PPV plugin within that package.
When I say membership, it could also mean pay per view (which is effectively membership of a single video on a time limited basis).
Alternatively you could just use two different [fvplayer] shortcodes, one for members and one for non-members.
Or this could be coded around the fv_flowplayer_args_pre filter, here’s an example.
Making the web work for you, Alec
- This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Alec Kinnear. Reason: additional technical info
7 years ago in reply to: YouTube and GDPRHi Heinz-Hermann,
The GDPR is another in a line of too sweeping and ultimately toothless EU directives (as an extreme example if you order people “don’t breathe” or “don’t drink water” you’ll find very limited compliance).
A previous example of these directives is the cookie law. Basically all publishers just put up a notice now:
Don’t like cookies? Get off of our website.”
GDPR will be the same thing. YouTube and Facebook are covering their bases as they are the only companies large enough and who misuse this data in a substantial enough way.
Setting a local cookie (on your domain) for video playback is not a GDPR or privacy issue. Hence what we are doing at FV Player in terms of GDPR compliance (as we’ve always respected privacy and never tracked our users across the internet) is just supporting whatever YouTube is doing. I.e. our YouTube API support won’t break, however YouTube changes it.
GDPR is a mass hysteria like the Y2K mania or Bitcoin. We are not particularly susceptible to mass hysteria at Foliovision. Our values are permanent: software which works, respect for the individual, respect for privacy, respect for the independent web.
Cordial regards,
Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Action Custom PopupsHi Daniele,
Here’s how to use Overlay Ads (which are really like pop-up ads for playing videos, we don’t think adding full pop-ups in mid-playback makes sense).
Basically you add an action which includes an overlay ad. You can add multiple actions.
Lucia, it would make sense for us to do a quick screen recording of the process of adding a few different actions to a video. Let’s work on that together.
Thanks.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
7 years ago in reply to: Action Custom PopupsHi Daniele,
Mid-roll ads are definitely in the roadmap. We are completing the launch of v7 core first and our database driven playlist system first.
I believe the custom pop-ups (not video ads) can already appear any time during video playback. Unfortunately our documentation does not reflect that capability. Please speak to Martin about the timed pop-ups and update the documentation and send Daniele a link.
Thanks.
Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Flowplayer logo showing up when it shouldn'tHi Paul,
There’s no reason based on multisite that you’d need to keep the videos on both domains. We have clients on multisite and their media files are on the specific domain. I.e. here’s an image from this post on a complex multisite configuration.
You are welcome to choose a domain for your license and keep your files on the same domain. Or you can purchase one of our multisite packs or a simple add-on domain. We work hard to keep our licenses simple and affordable, whether for single domain or multiple domains.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Making the web work for you, Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Justify the tabs in tabs-playlist modeHi Redvivi,
We don’t want to add more scripts to FV Player. I am against slow plugins and slow page loads (as is Google, so you should be too).
Integrating the tabs into your theme custom web development. You should have your web developer work on integrating the tabs better into your theme (I can’t see the original demo unfortunately now). If there’s an issue with our CSS which your web developer discovers, we’d be happy to make a correction to it in core.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Hi Daniele,
Thanks for your follow up answer.
what percentage of video did you see;
We can track either last position in a video or total minutes watched of the video. We can’t track what percentage of a video you have seen effectively as the ongoing real time calculations (have you seen this minute or not) would be too intensive and put too high a load on publishers servers.
how many times did you see a video.
We can track number of viewings and total minutes watched. Would that work for you?
Your original request was for:
fv_wp_flowplayer_position_xxxx in wp_usermeta starts from zero. Is it possible to increase the counter so you can tell how many times you have seen the same video and the position reached in the last view?
This we can do.
Rapid implementation of these advanced tracking features would be $800 (it will cost us a lot more to build them but you are only supporting a small part of the custom development as an acceleration incentive). We will work closely with you to make sure the implementation suits your needs. There will be an admin screen with an overview of all users including total videos open and minutes watched. If you click on the user’s name you will get more detail with a full list of all the videos s/he has seen, the number of times s/he has opened the video, total minutes watched and last position in the most recent viewing of the video.
We can deliver this functionality within one month if you go ahead.
May I send you an invoice?
Making the web work for you, Alec
Hi Daniele,
It appears that you want watch percentage for each viewing. This is super-detailed tracking. Are you sure you need that much?
Can we cut back to:
1. number of times opened/started
2. last positionGoing further what would be achievable would be
1. total number of times opened
2. total minutes watched
3. last positionVersion two would be quite a bit more work.
Let me know.
Thanks.
Making the web work for you, Alec
Hi Daniele,
This is a very interesting suggestion (tracking multiple views). Thanks for asking about it.
On reflection, it seem to me more like an an additional stats add-on which goes beyond just keeping position in the video than an extension of the current feature which monitors progress in a video. That could include the “Watched” page you describe. This is a great idea for a full featured add-on.
Our current plan is to continue to only monitor the user’s most recent position where s/he left the video. This seems to me to be core functionality (pick up where you last left off).
If you’d like us to take this on as custom development (it would be with a 50% discount as we may be able to reuse some of the code), I’d be happy to accelerate the development of full viewing tracking including a watched page with number of times you viewed and/or a video has been viewed.
Let us know your thoughts Daniele
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
7 years ago in reply to: Using FV Player with WP Offload to S3 ProHi Ryan,
An automated workflow of uploading, archiving and transcoding to a single clean .mp4 file which your site would serve would take us two days which normally would be $3200. As I’d like to do this project, I’m happy to give you a 25% discount, i.e. $2400.
A Vimeo implementation would be easier, just a day of coding so $1500. The plus with Vimeo is that there’s less long term maintenance and a lot more infrastructure built out into the API if you decide you want extra features later.
You can have all the control over content and advertisements you want when using Vimeo Pro. It’s just a hosting platform with files. The two downsides of Vimeo Pro:
1. you can’t really get away with illegal or heavily pornographic content. There’s no reason you would shut down right away but you’ll have to worry about at some point being flagged if someone figures out you are using Vimeo hosting and complains.
2. the DRM protection is not as extensive as Cloudfront.But at $200/year for unlimited hosting with a working API and CDN all over the world, Vimeo Pro is a steal.
Let me know.
Making the web work for you, Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Chapters or transcript but not bothHi Michael,
We could help you with the custom display you are looking for as custom web development. What we’d need to start is a visual mockup, along with the code as it is now and access to your dev server. We could do the work without access to your dev server but it would be more difficult as we’d have to set up custom Cloudfront media and permissions to replicate your environment.
If there are further technical issues with Cloudfront, let us know. We do want to solve those.
Thanks.
Alec
- This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Alec Kinnear. Reason: not enough detail
7 years ago in reply to: Using FV Player with WP Offload to S3 ProHi Ryan’s Teammate,
You wrote:
Our largest issue is it’s a website where users can publicly upload, so people are definitely not rendering it in several different codecs for the best options. So we were curious if you had any server-side solutions? And if so how much something like this could run?
I’d suggest you piggyback on Vimeo’s API and keep the videos there. It’s much simpler infrastructure than Amazon AWS. We do have some experience with Elastic Transcoder of course. We’d be delighted to create either a Vimeo Pro upload solution or an Elastic Transcoder safety net for you.
Making the web work for you, Alec
Based on what I read about Vooplayer, you’d be much better off with FV Player. Vooplayer hasn’t really been updated in four years (a lot has changed with online video). We update and improve FV Player almost every week.
Hi Nanowhiz,
Thanks for the suggestions and a big thank you for the information on MediaElement support for Facebook and Twitter. We’ll improve our compatibility with the built-in MediaElement management of those video formats.
I have a question for you about Facebook video – do you know that if you show videos on Facebook via API and not via iframe that the video view count does not rise? Would that matter to you?
Making the web work for you, Alec
PS. I think Vooplayer is on sale more often than you’d suspect. Not sure about the quality of the code or why one would prefer to use a player focused on its own (expensive) CDN than a player which is focused on external hosting. Their sales page is certainly impressive. Thanks for sharing that too.
To avoid the scary data loss warning, just deactivate FV Player and then delete it via FTP. This works even with plugins who would delete their own data when you uninstall (very useful for us).
7 years ago in reply to: PeepSo Incompatibility IssueHi Clod,
Thanks for your help getting full access to PeepSo. We’ve looked carefully at the code.
Based on the current architecture of PeepSo, enabling alternative video technology would be days of work. PeepSo’s handling of content is entirely separate from WordPress.
We will ask the plugin authors to make the video display code modular or at least provide some filters for the HTML output of it.
If not, it’s just too big a job. The investment to write a bridge to PeepSo would be at least $2000.
Thanks.
Making the web work for you, Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Player takes a while to switch to HDHi Evélina,
Very interesting notes. The current FV Player behaviour is basically the same as Amazon Prime video and Netflix behave when buffering. The priority is to show something which means the beginning is always in low res.
Even NFL video works the same way.
A slow start time will really worry people (that video is not working at all). We will add this option but you’ll want to be careful about it. You may get some unexpected complaints about the change.
Thanks, Alec
Hi Allyn,
Thanks for the suggestion and the concrete examples (they help a lot). We’ve spent some time discussing this internally. There are big changes coming to playlist (stored in a database going forward).
What we’d like to add here are:
1. a parameter allowing you to specify the start video within a particular instance (won’t change the database version but just the starting video)
2. an end of playlist action (which happens on the last video in a playlist)These improvements should resolve your issues. For the time being, the solution is to avoid any kind of end of playlist action.
Thanks.
Alec
PS. Feel free to post any other workflow requests. I really appreciate them and we need to know about issues in the field to be able to make publishers’ lives easier.
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for taking the time to point the login issue out and debug it in depth. It’s not an easy solution as we don’t want to force people to log in to view.
We could force log in to post but if you are going back to a post on a different device that won’t work. As Edo pointed out, there was a change in our caching plugin which made this issue far more acute (even disposing of the cookie on the existing device).
We’ll keep a close eye on this issue.
Cordial regards,
Alec
Hi Nathan,
To step back a bit here and see the big picture (implementation of FV Player via the WordPress REST API), here’s what I’d do.
i.e. I’d have my application check for the presence of FV Player in the content first.
If no player, then I’d not add or change anything to my existing app (assuming everything is working fine for content display).
If FV Player is present, then I’d include the normal CSS files and the JS files required for FV Player.
Martin will package up the full set of dependencies in one nice package for people using the WordPress REST API.
If you come up with some clever implementations of video via WordPress REST API, let us know so we can support them better and share them with the WordPress REST API community.
I’m a big supporter of the WordPress REST API but we haven’t come up with a use case for ourselves where it’s more useful than writing plugins to the existing CMS. As WordPress becomes more and more top heavy (Customizer, Gutenberg), I can see the REST API becoming more and more attractive for WordPress front end development.
Cheers, Alec
Hi Devin,
Thanks for the in-the-field feedback. What should be happening now is “Auto” by default. If you choose a different resolution, you then get that resolution. My goal is to keep the interface as simple as possible so it seems better to me to give everyone auto but if you choose to start controlling your streams manually that’s what you get until you change your mind.
Resolution is device dependent and not account dependent so just because someone picked 480p on his or her telephone doesn’t mean s/he is stuck with it on his or her desktop.
Per se I don’t want to add an auto button but my mind is still open if there are a lot of requests.
Happy New Year!
Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Frequency of UpdatesHi Evelina,
It turns out that Martin and I had our signals crossed here a bit. The stable release is getting all update notifications for the beta release. Which it shouldn’t do. You should have to enable beta to get beta update notifications.
We’ll fix that in the next release tomorrow so all those update notifications will stop. In any case, this WordPress insanity that every living human has to install every update in real time is exactly that – insanity and has nothing to do with the history of software. The right approach is:
1. install security updates immediately
2. upgrade feature releases on a needs basisSo you can safely ignore releases until Martin posts here that the new release/beta notification system is inside the plugin.
Thanks for your patience and thank you again for reporting the issue. You’ve helped everyone.
Amitiés, Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Frequency of UpdatesHi Evelina,
Thanks for sharing this feedback. It means a lot to me (I hate annoying plugins).
Some suggestions:
1. Don’t make those updates (we ourselves created a plugin to manage and restrain WordPress updates called BusinessPress). Not every FV Player update even on Beta is absolutely necessary.
2. If you don’t need the cutting edge features, please move to stable. We keep stable as written on the box, stable.When we’ve moved to Flowplayer Core 7 before Christmas, the updates will slow down a bit but Beta will remain very active.
FV Player is one of the few plugins in the entire WordPress universe which has both beta and release versions together so you don’t have to waste your time manually installing and uninstalling versions (you can switch between them with just a dropdown).
What we will not ever move to again though is manually distributing specific versions outside of the upgrade cycle. That is a nightmare for both the developers and the users. I can’t believe anybody develops software that way. We should publicize our innovation more.
Thanks again for the feedback though! I hope the advice above will help you bring the update situation under control.
Amitiés, Alec
7 years ago in reply to: When lightboxes totally don't work…Hi Paul,
We’re thinking about upgrading/replacing the current lightbox as I’ve found that Colorbox doesn’t handle images as well as I’d like sometimes. How did you finally resolve the issue with our lightbox?
You should be able to disable our lightbox and use another. The one I liked recently and use on a personal site is ARI Fancy Lightbox, in turn based on FancyBox.
Let me know how it goes.
7 years ago in reply to: Adding Chromecast to FV PlayerHi David,
Thanks for your post:
Yesterday I received the message about the black Friday sale and the roll out of new features. It mentioned that “FV Player core 7 is in beta already along with a new player interface…”
If I purchase Pro today, will I be able to access the core 7 beta features immediately using the dropdown setting in Pro?
Some of them. It’s very beta. Do not put it into production please.
If so, is the Chromecast feature a part of the core 7 code where I can test it out with my devices?
It should be but it hasn’t been tested yet.
Thanks for trying FV Plugins.
Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Copy Links not workingHi John,
If videos are changed, the links to them would have to be changed. Adding a system for trying to track videos on a page would result in fairly fragile and high maintenance code. I.e. I don’t see it as a win for our customers or us either.
When creating internal links to teaching videos, for more flexibility it’s better to link to it as either the page or even to an anchor link. That way you can change the video as often as you like with
Of course an anchor link won’t work with a link to a specific time in the video (which if the video’s been changed would probably be wrong anyway).
We’ll definitely investigate the strange broken link.
Cordial regards,
Alec
PS. I can’t see the real estate video there (I don’t have access readily available). Could you send me a link to that video?
7 years ago in reply to: FV Player ImplementationHi Aaron,
Please let us know how it goes with getting flash out of your workflow and if there’s anything else we should add to those guides to make them easier to follow.
Thanks!
- This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
7 years ago in reply to: Delivering ads with expired licenceHi Kobus,
We’d love to have you guys renew but FV VAST/VPAID is a service. If you’d like to use, you will have to renew.
As you know we are working on bring back as much functionality as possible to YouTube (and more than anyone else).
Cordial regards,
Alec
Hi Marin,
The issue is with your theme. There are a number of z-indexes but not all major elements have z-index, some even have relative z-index. You have to set z-index to all elements or none of them. We already have a z-index of the maximum value in our CSS, but if it’s parent has this set to 0, video will be 0 too.
You could have your CSS designer correct your theme for z-index issues or we’d be happy to do so for $140 (it would be two pro support incidents as we have to correct the issues for both desktop and mobile). The theme is built in a way, that the mobile navigation is hidden on the right and slides in while pushing the whole page content to the side. This often creates position and z-index bugs. If you are thinking of a redesign, right now would be a great time to do it (pre-test your new theme for video playback with advanced options – most theme shops handle z-indexes right but the ones who don’t probably do it wrong on all their themes).
The workaround with the native player will continue to work for you.
Let me know what we can do to help you get where you want to go.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Alec
7 years ago in reply to: Playlist changes very disappointingHi DSwan34,.
No titles on mobile was not great – my fault as I’m not a big mobile user and didn’t realise right away there is no hover on the thumbnails. We are going to work on having multiple designs rather than a bunch of options for a single design. So there will be a version with titles again similar to the older version. End users will be able to customise the different designs.
We’re experimenting with what will be options for the designs. In my opinion, FV Player is already overbuilt with too many options in too many places, so I’m most interested right now in streamlining. We may start to move some of the more marginal/dangerous preferences into a configuration file. The idea would be to consolidate preferences on current best practices (we’re carrying a lot of legacy preferences that made sense in a pre-HTML 5 world with less capable browsers and lots of flash).
Thanks for your feedback!
7 years ago in reply to: Playlist changes very disappointingHi DSwan,
The new playlists default templates are awesome and modern. The old ones were really dowdy and old school and should have been changed a long time ago. To make sure people actually got something modern, we changed the default style.
On the other hand, our programming team should have the old playlist template available as an alternative (not default) option so that those who prefer it or have it worked into a complex design or specific interface can easily revert to it.
The next step will be to allow easy customisation of the templates. As everyone who wants to customise a template will have very specific requests and requirements, it’s best to let people set them up as they like, not just CSS but also the HTML.
Thanks for your feedback though! It allowed us to make immediate improvements to the new playlist theme and encouraged us to make at least two design themes available ASAP.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
7 years ago in reply to: Playlist changes very disappointingHi DSwan,
The new playlists default templates are awesome and modern. The old ones were really dowdy and old school and should have been changed a long time ago. To make sure people actually got something modern, we changed the default style.
On the other hand, our programming team should have the old playlist template available as an alternative (not default) option so that those who prefer it or have it worked into a complex design or specific interface can easily revert to it.
The next step will be to allow easy customisation of the templates. As everyone who wants to customise a template will have very specific requests and requirements, it’s best to let people set them up as they like, not just CSS but also the HTML.
Thanks for your feedback though! It allowed us to make immediate improvements to the new playlist theme and encouraged us to make at least two design themes available ASAP.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Hi Pádraig,
Thanks for the quick bug report, Pádraig. I’m not a big mobile user (particularly for recreational activity) so I didn’t realise the hover over wouldn’t work on mobile (logically it should follow the finger). I’m glad the fix will help.
The old style design template should be back early next week. Sometime after that we’ll add full custom playlist templates for people with PHP skills.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Making the web work for you, Alec
Hi Martin,
The way to improve this is not to change the new default playlist (the one where title is not visible) but to offer other playlist templates (similar to the old format with the visible name but even then hopefully somewhat visually improved).
Hi Pádraig,
Our goal here is to really improve the default design of our templates for playlists. You might want to give the new playlist look a longer trial as it really does look fresher and more modern. It does make perfect sense to me thought that one template does not fit all situations so we are 1. making other templates available 2. planning to provide documentation on how to create and customise your own templates.
Your suggestions are welcome.
Thanks!
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
Hi Kevin and Ren,
Are you referring with “thumbnail” to splash screens for your videos or are you referring to the timeline thumbnails which appear on YouTube videos when you run your cursor across the timeline in a desktop web browser?
Please let me know.
Thanks!
8 years ago in reply to: All Video on Site Stopped Working…Hi Martin,
It’s a pity there’s no way to flush CDN cache. Is there? Why shouldn’t we come up with a best practices and publish it. We know as much about the issue as anyone else.
We could trick the CDN’s by making optimized bundles of js include a version number (each time it’s rebuilt the version number goes up).
8 years ago in reply to: Interactive Transcript ImprovementsThanks Jair! We’re looking into accelerating multiple languages for transcripts.
8 years ago in reply to: HTML popups – dynamic "next page" buttonHi Ferdinand,
We’ve written up some documentation on how to use our API to program the pop-up at the end to take you to the video of your choice. Look for this section:
fv_flowplayer_popup_html – allows you to customize what’s in the popup which shows at the end of video. You can use the global $post variable to check what post is being served. Here’s a code to auto-generate a popup for each player:
The simplest solution is simply to link to the next lesson as a video action could be done using the Redirection function in our action menu. Unless you are dealing with hundreds of videos, just adding manual redirections would be quick and efficient.
Let us know how this goes. We are very interested in helping you get to a good result for your use case.
Making the web work for you, Alec
8 years ago in reply to: YouTube function requestHi Clod,
Thanks for suggestion.
I see exactly what you mean in terms of YouTube start times. I’m a keen advocate of just allowing people to post a raw YouTube or Vimeo link into comments and have it turn into a suitably sized FV Player instance.
This is partially implemented now. We’ll improve both performance and preferences for videos in comments and even posts (so that if I write a post I can just enter a carriage return, paste
https://youtu.be/eRrnUD6MtWo?t=782
add another carriage return and get a bare bones FV Player instance on save. We’ve already done this for a custom Markdown implementation for long description fields for our real estate clients. This functionality is not working here in our forums yet as this example will show.https://youtu.be/eRrnUD6MtWo?t=288
In terms of starting at a time, YouTube let’s us copy the exact link to starting at exactly that time on YouTube (pasteable between browsers). I believe we can call a YouTube video at a specific time via the API. Example: https://youtu.be/eRrnUD6MtWo?t=782 The time value is a simple seconds count so there’s nothing mysterious here.
With Vimeo it’s more difficult as there’s no human interface for copying that start time. If it’s possible via API to start at a specific time, we could add some easy syntax (which you could show to your users above the comment box.
For example: https://youtu.be/eRrnUD6MtWo Start:4:48 which would be the equivalent of https://youtu.be/eRrnUD6MtWo?t=288. Or we could just observe the YouTube format only (tell the readers to add time values in seconds).
Hopefully we could do the same with Vimeo. If we can do it with clean MP4’s, I’m game to do it there as well. It may be a few iterations before we can add this functionality everywhere but we can probably get YouTube start times into comments pretty quickly.
So yes this is coming.
Now that you have some more information, how would you like to see the syntax and how would it best work for your users? I can’t guarantee we’ll do it your way (we must implement the feature in the best way for most users). Nevertheless, let’s start from your concrete use case.
Making the web work for you, Alec
- This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Alec Kinnear.
8 years ago in reply to: AB loop problemHi Darius,
If we forced looping outside of the loop zone that would make it impossible to watch the rest of the video without moving the AB fence posts with your mouse. I think this behaviour would be undesirable. I.e. clicking the play bar outside of the AB loop should allow normal playback to potentially set other A or B points. I’m open minded on this but would need some convincing.
Cordial regards, Alec
8 years ago in reply to: Another exoclick invideo issueHi Frank,
The best thing you can do for your site is get rid of as much extraneous code as you can. Themes which include a lot of functionality usually break many plugins (including well-coded ones like ours). We’re both plugin and theme users as well as plugin authors so we’ve seen it all.
As Martin recommends the best thing to do would be to remove some of this code and just use the built-in and ultra compatible lightbox functionality within FV Player (based on the open source and highly rated ColorBox if you are wondering what the code is).
If you’d like us to clean up the theme compatibility issue for you hands on, please don’t hesitate to pick up a pro support incident.
We want Exoclick ads to work great for you, please be in touch on how it goes.
Thanks!
8 years ago in reply to: Interactive Transcript ImprovementsThanks Sergii.
Could you tell me more about what you envision as:
Interaction support for both video and audio.
Cordial regards,
Alec
8 years ago in reply to: Interactive Transcript ImprovementsHi Sergii,
That’s a long list. We have to be sure to focus our development efforts wisely. We can’t be everywhere at the same time. I have a test to help narrow the focus.
Imagine you were being charged $50 for each feature on your list we implemented. Which of these features would you be willing to pay for?
Thanks.
Making the web work for you, Alec
8 years ago in reply to: Change Fullscreen Button PositionHi Pádraig,
Thanks for the detailed notes. We are in the middle of adding a lot more customisation options for the player interface. First stop is a YouTube style interface (without the annoying ads of course!) for people who have visitors used to that interface.
Your notes are a good start to further improvements. You may be interested in a long article I published today with ideas on how to improve the WordPress Editor and the WordPress editing experience.
Much appreciated.
Alec
8 years ago in reply to: Change Fullscreen Button PositionHi Pádraig,
Thanks for the detailed notes. We are in the middle of adding a lot more customisation options for the player interface. First stop is a YouTube style interface (without the annoying ads of course!) for people who have visitors used to that interface.
Your notes are a good start to further improvements. You may be interested in a long article I published today with ideas on how to improve the WordPress Editor and the WordPress editing experience.
Much appreciated.
Alec
Hi Shez,
As you have an existing account, it’s not that easy for me to merge you to the m….m…@hotmail.com account. Ideally you’d check the m….m…@hotmail.com account for the welcome emails and use that account to log in to collect your licenses.
If you post the domains you’d like to license here, I’d be happy to add them by hand right away so you can just get started.
We’ll get started on the IP address feature next week.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision!
Alec
PS. Martin, we’d like to merge the two accounts and resend the welcome emails to the Gmail account after making the Gmail account primary. I’d like to be able to do this myself. Let’s talk about how to handle this kind of situation in the future in an easy way.
Hi Shez,
That’s super. I’ve checked your license. It went to your Paypal address: m….m…@hotmail.com. We’ve been having some delivery issues to hotmail addresses in the last month (should not be a problem with our SendGrid sends but who knows).
Could you check that hotmail address (and if it’s not in the Inbox, please check spambox). I’ll authorise your Gmail address for that account as well.
Thanks!
Alec
Hi Shez,
The immediate fix with ID/IP address. The Widevine support will take us a while but it will come eventually no matter what.
Thanks!
Hi Shez,
Great. Buy a five site license and we’ll add the feature within the next two weeks.
Alec
Hi Shez,
Thanks for your initiative and forward looking ideas in this area. DRM is an area I think about often as well. There is an issue with your solution:
For the time being, I would like to be able to display the users ID and IP address in such a way that says, “this video is being viewed by ******” and then display their IP address as well and the date.
It’s simple enough to just disable this display in CSS via inspect element. Of course someone needs to have some expertise in web development or at least HTML to do so but it really only annoys paying users.
That said, I’m willing to implement exactly what you requested if you have $200 to throw at the solution.
Cordial regards, Alec
PS. The worst kind of DRM and licensing inconveniences the paying users and doesn’t stop pirates. We work really hard at Foliovision that our own licensing doesn’t get in the way of paying users (you’ll notice that the upgrade to FV Player Pro is almost completely automatic – we plan to start recording domain ahead of time so it’s fully automatic).
We’ll work towards a Widevine solution (Google and Netflix) in 2017.
8 years ago in reply to: Use colorbox on images – not just textHi Luria,
HTML code tags around your code snippet will keep your code clean. (I’d like to move the forums to Markdown but it looks like we haven’t done so yet).
In general, we’d like to implement this image to open up video feature immediately but we want to keep it simple enough that it’s easy to configure and to use.
Okay I’ve just reread that whole thread. Thanks for relinking it. I don’t know why we didn’t just create this code then.
Martin, could we please do this?
Thanks.
8 years ago in reply to: Use colorbox on images – not just textHi Luria,
Can you repost your example? I’m going to run a test of some syntax:
* list item one
* list item two1. number list item one
2. numbered list item twoFoliovision › Forums › FV Player › Requests and Feedback › Use colorbox on images – not just text
And more code in Markdown style:
Foliovision › Forums › FV Player › Requests and Feedback › Use colorbox on images – not just text
8 years ago in reply to: Clickable playerHi Marcel,
What you are asking for is fairly easily possible but it’s better suited to custom programming for your site than as a standard feature. Feel free to engage us do it but in principle any experienced WordPress developer should be able to add an open in a new chromeless window function to your site using existing FV Player technology.
Martin might have some tech tips on how to best do this.
Thanks.
Alec
8 years ago in reply to: How to use RTMP streams with FlashThanks Alfons for your detailed notes.
Alfons we’ll work with you on format priority until we get the fallback working just right. Mobile playback and formats are a moving target: we tune the priorities to stay up to date with best practices, along with existing browser technologies, security methods and current devices.
8 years ago in reply to: Meta Description in Post List AdminHi James,
How much could you contribute to accelerate this feature? On my end, I’ve already donated tens of thousands of hours of developer time to FV Simpler SEO and thousands to FV Descriptions.
I’d recommend using FV Descriptions as a complement to FV Simpler SEO. It’s perfect for what you want. The interface could use some AJAX love to bring it in line with 2016 coding standards but FV Descriptions really works for getting through a lot of content quickly.
Making the web work for you, Alec
8 years ago in reply to: Cannot Insert Player in WordPressHi Tony,
Here’s what the simplest solution.
1. You test our player with some existing or new posts.
2. If you are happy with FV Player, you install Search Regex and replace the existing video shortcodes with either our fvplayer format or with simple video tags (standard WordPress video format).If you aren’t happy with FV Player, please let us know why.
We will consider adding support for jwplayer and a few other proprietary formats in the future. It’s generally better though to convert the tags with Search Regex.
Thanks!
8 years ago in reply to: Meta Description in Post List AdminHi James,
I like your idea. You have my full attention. What’s your budget for this upgrade to FV Simpler SEO?
Cordial regards,
Alec
Hi Kobus,
You’re welcome for the support.
I appreciate your issues with server performance. KeyCDN is very inexpensive with no minimums at .04¢/GB. If you turn off JetPack you may find that your sites run faster.
Trusting Automattic or Jetpack is like trusting Google: extremely naive. When you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. Your site and your users are being datamined, your business is being made dependent on a free service which can be taken away at any time.
Inexpensive services I like (Vimeo for instances). Free services I do not. Freestanding free software is the only free which is really free.
Jetpack is single handedly setting out to undermine freestanding WordPress and the independent developers who have made WordPress great. It’s not the core at WordPress which is of value (still fairly mediocre starting from spaghetti code a decade ago). It’s the always been the plugins and the plugin authors who make WordPress an ecosystem worth using.
You can’t say what I’ve said publicly about Jetpack or the moderators ban you at both WordPress.org and/or WPtavern. That’s how Jetpack manages to maintain some semblance of a positive reputation. That’s how Matt Mullenweg and Automattic roll. Hijacking the project we all helped build, suppressing dissent.
Making the web work for you, Alec
Hi Kobus,
Jetpack does several things wrong:
- bundles dozens of plugins together, forcing a site to carry megabytes of dangerous code (Jetpack has had security issues this year).
- encourages people to use second rate plugins instead of best of breed.
- calls home incessantly (Jetpack is basically spyware)
- uses unfair advantage (no one else except Automattic would get away with this kind of bundling in the WordPress directory)
Jetpack is entirely against the spirit of open source. Jetpack is cheating by Automattic and an attempt to reduce all of WordPress to serviceware (pay to play). WordPress was built by all of us (we’ve been building WordPress for over ten years) to provide a platform independent publishing tool, not commercial serviceware.
I hope the above short summary helps you understand why Foliovision holds Jetpack in contempt.
Your point that we should be compatible with Jetpack though is a good one. We follow all WordPress core conventions in our software to maximise compatibility. We build and maintain very sophisticated commercial sites who sometimes have dozens of plugins so we’ve always focused on compatibility first.
8 years ago in reply to: Video Ads (Pro)Hi Ron,
Please don’t update the player for now. Reverting to the previous version was the right way to go when the update didn’t go as planned.
We’re really sorry about these issues. We’re doing everything we can (including stable and beta in a single plugin) to minimise the chances of any compatibility issues affecting the end user. We’ll make further improvements very soon.
Hi Martin,
There are real issues with WordPress 4.6.1 and the latest FV Player Pro. I’ve just helped TJ revert to an earlier version (which does work with WordPress 4.6.1). The issue may be in the beta code. What’s particularly tough is that once a person is in the beta stream, s/he can’t revert to normal version, even if s/he deletes the beta folder within the pro plugin (that still leavesl a fatal error if the client was already on beta).
Fatal error: Can't use function return value in write context in /home/sitename/public_html/w/wp-content/plugins/fv-player-pro/beta/fv-player-pro.class.php on line 2299
We should also have an older stable version available in My Downloads for these cases. When redownloading FV Player Pro from the free player we should turn off beta every time (the user will have to reenable beta versions manually).
Thanks for looking at this as soon as you can.
Alec