Hi Alec & team,

Yes, I realize you’re still working hard on this playlist feature. And I can certainly see your point about lightboxes being fast for adding new playlists.

On the other hand I have no clue as to how you envision the final functionality, so I am commenting on the situation as it is now, because it is the only reference I have.

So while lightbox-enhancing the workflow thing might work well for adding new playlists, this is not so for editing or maintainance (change the order, replacing a spash screen, updating a video) as it currently is setup. Even if you select your shortcode, you don’t get your current data in the lightbox for editing when you click the flowplayer icon.

For a 4 video playlist, the shortcode in my post is like this:
[fvplayer src='https://s3-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxnieuwe-alinea.mp4' width=700 height=433 splash='http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.xx/wp-content/uploads/andreausb-1.jpg' playlist="https://s3-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxga-naar-begin-einde.mp4,http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.xx/wp-content/uploads/andreausb-1.jpg;https://s3-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxnieuwe-alinea.mp4,http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.xx/wp-content/uploads/andreausb-1.jpg;https://s3-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxselecteer-tot-en-met.mp4,http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.xx/wp-content/uploads/andreausb-1.jpg"]

Lots of opportunity to accidentally delete a character or whatever, while editing your posts or page. Thus breaking things. Especially in a site where multiple editors work on posts. Also imagine a video tutorial based course website where there would be 75+ playlists. That’s a lot of shortcode where things can easily go wrong when editing the various posts and pages.

Deciding to have your plugin consistently add such long shortcodes is not really a UI aspect, but a very fundamental core decision as to how fool proof the plugin will be. And also maybe flexible your plugin is going to be in the future when you may want to develop and add features. Not sure about that one, though.

I’m not married to the idea that the solution should be back-end based. I am result-oriented. A short code like [playlistmyname] is much more foolproof than the shortcode of my current 4-video playlist as pasted above.

I don’t have much experience with playlists and embedding video, but I can imagine something like this:

– A button (front-end or back-end) where you can make your playlist.
– A field to give the playlist a name
– Fields to add parameters (display size, autoplay yes/no, styling, use first frame as splashscreen yes/no)
– then fields to enter the URLs of the videos and (optionally) the splashscreens;
– also option add a text label for each video in case you want to forgo splashscreens and just have a clickable link.
– As a bonus it would be neat if you could change the play order fairly easily.
– Finally you save the thing and add the playlist to your posts or page, like [playlistmyname].

I’ve seen plugins which do something similar to the above, but they don’t have the option to play expiring URL Amazon S3 videos.

So, dream on Janna… :-)

But seriously, I am making a site with lots of video’s. E.g. the feature to have the option to take the first frame as splashscreen is a huge time saver. It’s only fair to make advanced options available for paid versions only. I don’t mind paying something for a reliable product that does what I need.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but you asked for my ‘clear ideas’:-)

Best, Janna

Hi,

Sorry for the delay: I have 4 video’s in the playlist.

Have a nice weekend,
Janna

Sure, I am willing to help testing. Just let me know what to do and what you info like to hear back from me.