Flowplayer

You don't have to be a seasoned veteran programmer to notice that controling our player is based on using shortcodes. Shortcodes are a part of the WordPress core and they are specifically designed for simplifying the use of code in the editor.

You can think of them as a set of pre-defined macros - a series of words, shortcuts and symbols, that have to be used with an appropriate syntax and will trigger a specific response. In this case it's generating an HTML or other markup. Shortcodes in WordPress are easily recognizable as they are always using the square brackets - "[]". For example, one of the default shortcodes in WordPress is [video].

FV Player's shortcode usually looks like this:

[fvplayer src="https://vimeo.com/196881410" splash="https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/609485450_1280x720.jpg?r=pad" caption="Foliovision Promo Video"]

Keep reading Get Your Hands on the Ultimate FV Player Shortcode Cheat Sheet

YouTube Subtitles Support (Pro)

Until now, the only way to add subtitles to a YouTube-hosted video was to manually upload them. This is the regular way to add subtitles to all videos - you create the subs yourself (we even have a guide on how to use YouTube to create a transcript) in VTT format and add them via the shortcode editor.

But what if the video on YouTube already has subtitles? Downloading them is pretty tricky and you have to use some kind of third-party software to do that. However, we have discovered a way to use the YouTube API to handle the subtitles through our player, so from now on, you don't have to upload anything. Just post a YouTube video as you normally would and FV Player will automatically load the subtitles, no other settings are required. Check it in this demo:

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: YouTube Subtitles and Fixed Error Reporting in Chrome

Tracking of Broken YouTube Videos

Many of our customers have websites that serve videos hosted solely on YouTube. Tracking the videos in a large number can be quite exhausting, but our player has been supporting Google Analytics event tracking for quite some time now.

Until now, however, you were only able to track the general video errors. Now we have added a specific Event Action called "YouTube video removed". This indicates that the player can't reach the video on YouTube. This may be caused by several reasons, connected to a specific error on YouTube:

• This video is private - the source video has been set as Private, thus can't be viewed publicly anymore

• This video is unavailable - usually means the video has been deleted

• The uploader has not made this video available in your country - the video has a geographical restrictions for some reason and can't be played in your current location

  Keep reading New FV Player Features: Improved Tracking and Smooth Streaming Support

FV Player just got one of the bigger updates. What does the version 6.2 bring?

• New Feature – Email Subscription Forms
• Improved Audio Layout
• Redesigned Playlists

New Feature – Email Subscription Forms

FV Player allows users to have some custom scripts as end pop-ups for quite some time, but that's not for everyone. We wanted to create a new way for the users that are not as tech savvy to make the most of their videos. The most common way to use your video views for your benefit is earning sweet profit from serving ads with them. But what else can you do with that?

You can use the videos as a marketing tool. And what is one of the most powerful and common tools of online marketing? Definitely newsletters.

That's why we decided to create a simple out-of-the-box solution for creating a subscription form at the end of the video, that will display a message you want and will be connected directly with the mailing list of your choosing.

Keep reading FV Player 6.2: MailChimp Integration, Redesigned Playlists & Audio Format

Amazon Drive is a cloud service similar to Google Drive, primarily made for storing user content and sharing it easily with others.

Until this month, Amazon Drive was offering unlimited storage for everyone for a trial period and Amazon Prime users were supposed to have it without restrictions. The current pricing will allow you to keep 5GB for free, or switch to a paid storage plan that will provide 100GB for $11.99 per year.

Still, it's a bargain compared to Amazon's S3, which isn't so expensive itself, but it can easily cost you monthly what you would pay yearly for Drive for the same amount of data, if not more.

On the other hand, S3 is designed for video hosting (among other things), so the loading of videos is much faster than Drive. If you are, however, looking for a place to cheaply store large amount of videos, you don't necessarily need speed or download protection and you don't want your videos to be rejected because of their content (for instance, YouTube won't allow you to upload adult content), Amazon Drive might be for you.

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: Amazon Drive and Improved DRM Text

FV Player's latest update (6.1.3) brings a couple of new settings that affect mobile devices, along with improved playlist subtitles and better control of how MPEG-DASH streams switch quality.

New Mobile Settings

There is a whole new section in Settings > FV Player > Setup tab called Mobile Settings.

It contains two brand new features:

Use native fullscreen on mobile

When turned on, this option will force player to load the native fullscreen on all mobile devices. This will result to losing all the FV Player's extra features like pop-ups, ads, speed buttons, AB loop or subtitles, but it will provide a faster and more stable interface for some of the devices. This option is actually turned on automatically for mobiles and tablets with older versions of OS (Android 4.4 or lower and iOS below 7).

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: Mobile Settings and Better Playlist Subtitles

Improved Keyboard Controls

Controlling FV Player on desktop can be done by mouse, but also by using a set of keyboard shortcuts. These can be used in the fullscreen or when the mouse pointer is hovering within the borders of the video box. For instance, you can use the keyboard to start and stop the video, mute it, and change the volume or speed of the playback. 

Not every user knows, however, that there are some features that are available only via the keyboard. We have improved the seeking that was available before and added a couple of new ones:

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: Improved Keyboard Controls and Transcripts

We have released a new update of the FV Player, which brings some changes that are not immediately visible because they concern mainly the backend, but that doesn't make them any less exciting!

The version number is 6.1. We based our version numbers on core Flowplayer engine for a while (that's why it was 6.0.5.x before), but there are no more Flowplayer 6 versions to be released and we don't like these long version numbers anymore.

FV Player Pro latest version remains 0.8.17. 

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: Improved Video Loading Code

Update:

Vimeo has made a new statement about the situation with deprecated TLS protocols on one of their CDN providers. A Vimeo employee, Dana Cacciatore, has stated in this forum thread:

Our CDN provider has just implemented a fix that should restore playback functionality on older browsers and applications.

Please note that this is only a temporary fix. The deprecation plan of TLS 1.0/1.1 is mandated by the PCI Security Standards Council and will force numerous providers across the internet to adjust according. Our team will be working on a communication plan that outlines specific details for users who access Vimeo on older browsers and devices.

Original post:

In the last few days, some of you may have noticed that the Vimeo-hosted videos are not playing on older Android devices - specifically the versions 4.x. and lower.

Keep reading Update: Issues With Vimeo on Older Android Devices

It's pretty easy to track the performance of your videos and ads with FV Player, since it automatically integrates with Google Analytics and creates custom events, which you can filter to get the most relevant and detailed data. You can find out which videos are viewed the most, what devices are used the most for watching, track video errors, or even create a custom email reports, so you are informed all the time. You can find more about tracking videos in this guide: Using Google Analytics with FV Player.

There was a slight problem with the labels of YouTube videos - they were marked with their URL suffix and were recognizable only by the video ID, for example "watch?v=A8o_fqHSsYI". As some of our users pointed out, this was not very convenient, so from now on, the player will label the videos with their full title, with "YouTube:" as a prefix, and the video ID as a suffix - very similar to labeling of Vimeo-hosted videos. For example: "YouTube: Tears of Steel - Blender VFX Open Movie (R6MlUcmOul8)".

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: YouTube Labels in Google Analytics and More

We spent a lot of time thinking about ways to protect one's video from being downloaded and how to integrate the solution into FV Player. Although there isn't exactly a bulletproof way to do it, there are many ways to make it harder. 

But what if you have a membership site and you actually want your users to download your videos as easily as possible? We got you covered with a new feature, that has been released in the Beta mode of FV Player Pro: video downloading is a built-in feature with no need for activation on your end, and it allows you to use a new shortcode, which creates a download link visible only to logged in users.

For example, one of our clients, an online adult website  harrietsugarcookie.com has a membership section (read more about this interesting blog in our case study), which can be accessed by paying a monthly fee. The paying members can then access video content in various qualities and download the videos directly with FV Player. The video links are protected from hotlinking with a secure token and distributed via CDN. The download link will therefore appear only to those who are logged in and it will expire after the pre-set time.

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: Download Links With Simple History Tracking

FV Player has new version - 6.0.5.22, that brings a cool new feature called Video Links. Imagine that you want to show someone a certain part of a video. Until now, you had to share a link to a page and then add something like "Check out that killer solo at 2:34!".

From now on, FV Player will allow you or anyone who watches the video generate a link with a certain point on the timeline. Anyone who clicks that link will be directed right to the video and it will start playing from the given point. The best thing is that it works with all videos (with the exception of live streams of course), no matter where they are hosted.

Video Links adds a new button to the top bar in the player, right between social media sharing buttons and Embed button. 

Jump to the second of the video you would like to share and click on the Link button. This will generate a new link to the video that will contain the time information. The new link will be automatically copied to your clipboard - you will know that because a message will appear, that will say "Video Link Copied to Clipboard".

Keep reading FV Player's New Features: Video Links and Other Improvements

Protecting your videos from downloading is basically impossible, but you can make it harder for those who want to steal your content.

Imagine that you have an encrypted stream that is really hard to download. But how can you stop someone from plainly screen capturing the video? There are a couple of solutions, but most of them are not really working. The user captures the video and uses it on his web. You are furious because you put your heart into creating your content and now someone else is using it without your permission. How can you prove that the video was yours?

This is where the DRM Text feature comes in. It creates a small overlay box that watermarks the video by randomly appears in the corners and showing the user's ID if he's logged in, IP address, current date and URL of the page on which the video is posted. The box will appear for just a fraction of a second and repeat regularly during the video playback.

Keep reading DRM Text - New Feature That Will Help You Protect Your Videos

As some of you probably already noticed, FV Player is again richer with some exciting new features. We have a new hosting option - KeyCDN, you can choose a new Skin for your player, and we added a way of sharing your videos directly to Facebook.

New options in Skin settings

You will like this change especially if you show subtitles in your videos. If you go to Settings > FV Player > Skin tab, you will find two new menus: Playlist and Subtitles. As you can see, you can now adjust the colours of your playlists, but a lot more can be done about the subtitles. You can set the change the font and it's size, lower the opacity and change the colour. The best thing is that you will see all your tweaks in a live preview.

The live preview is also available in the main demo video. Previously you had to update the settings by saving all the changes to see how your newly adjusted skin will look like. Now you can just play the video, change what you want and see how it will look like instantly in the video box. More info on how to customize your skin can be found in this guide - Customizing FV Player Skin.

Keep reading New Skin Settings, KeyCDN Support and Facebook Sharing in FV Player

ExoClick is one of the largest and fastest growing online advertising networks. Based in sunny Barcelona, ExoClick provides ads for 2.4% of the web, making it the 4th largest for websites in the world (according to W3Techs). Our clients have asked for an easy way of using ExoClick with WordPress, so we have delivered a smooth, Flowplayer based solution. From now on, all the owners of the Pro license can use ads from this network in their videos. 

ExoClick offers advertisers and publishers over 20 ad formats and detailed statistical data with several options to customize the tracking of their performance. Creating a Publisher profile (the one you need to serve ads with your videos) is free and you don't have to fill in any payment data until the point when you want to be paid.

Keep reading ExoClick Ads Now Supported by FV Player

We always listen to our users when it comes to improving our player. Many great features now available to everyone were made that way. However, adding a new feature as fast as possible has it's downside - it might not be stable. Therefore, a few months back we allowed FV Player Pro users to switch to Beta version, which gave them the option to use the stable release, while allowing the early adopters to get their hands on some exciting new technology.

In the recent few months we have implemented a couple of amazing features to our player, but they were only available in the Beta mode. Until now! After a lots of testing, the FV Player Pro 0.8 update will incorporate all of the features into the core Release version for everyone to enjoy. Below is the list of the awesome new features you can look forward to!

Keep reading FV Player Pro's Update: All Beta Features Now Available for Everyone

Many of our clients ask us: "How can I protect my videos from people downloading or stealing them?" The answer is unfortunately very short: you can't. No matter how strong of an encryption you use for streaming, or how many other layers of protection you use, if anyone can play your videos, your videos can be stolen. In most cases, users can just download them. Google's Widevine DRM was a breakthrough in this area and is widely used, most famously by Netflix. Widevine works in recent Chrome, Opera and Firefox.

But just stopping people from downloading your videos isn't enough. A user can just record and recompress your vide, a.k.a. screen capture or screen recording.. It's a bit more work, but modern tools and powerful computers make video encoding and re-encoding easier. The free ffmpeg libraries are available to all open source projects. Or, you can just use a screen capturing software. 

But there are ways to protect my videos from screen capturing, aren't they?

Keep reading Stealing videos: can publishers stop video download theft? Honestly no. But neither can Netflix nor Google.