tripwire magazine

Embedding video or audio streaming into websites and blogs is getting quite common these days. Video posts are used to give blogs a more personal touch and many tutorials are also provided as video recordings instead of long complex step by step. No doubt media on websites and blogs is here to stay and we need the best tools we can get to provide a good and professional experience to our visitors or readers. In this article you will find a list of the most popular free and commercial solutions.

Introduction

This article features a collection of both free and commercial media players and If you’re looking for a media solution for your website or blog I’m confident that you will find what you need here. For most people I would expect that the free players will cover their needs for offering some basic video or audio on their web pages. On the other hand I haev found that the commercial players have unique features that some could benefit from. Examples could be sofisticates language and advertising support and build in media conversion and preparations for web presentation. I hope you will leave a comment to let us all know if I missed an interesting player or if you have experience in this area you want to share.

Free website media players

embedr

Embedr is a free service that lets anyone create a custom playlist of videos from the top video sites on the web. The embedr player can be embedded into your site or blog. If you’re using Wordress then the Embedr Wordpress Plugin may be just what you need. embedr has a nice visual iTunes style playlist function below the movie.

See a Live Demo

Flowplayer

Flowplayer is an Open Source (GPL 3) video player for the Web. Use it to embed video streams into your web pages. Built for site owners, developers, hobbyists, businesses and serious programmers.

JW FLV Player
The JW FLV Player is the Internet’s most popular and flexible media player. It supports playback of any format the Adobe Flash Player can handle (FLV, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports RTMP, HTTP, live streaming, various playlists formats, a wide range of settings and an extensive javascript API.

The JW FLV Player is now fully skinnable. Select the best look for your site or design your own. See all our Skins now.

Flash Video Player Plugin for WordPress
This Flash Video Player Plugin for WordPress is ideal to embed quickly your video into your Wordpress Blog. It supports custom skin, watermark logo, poster frames and floating controls. Good instructions and documentation can be found on the website and there’s also a forum. This player support skins and there are

In order to use this plugin unpack it and transfer the flash-video-player folder into your wp-contents/plugins folder and activate the Flash Video Plugin in your WordPress admin panel. You can find more info here.

Yahoo! Media Player

The Yahoo! Media Player enhances your web site or blog by creating an embedded player for each audio link. All the links can be played with one click, turning the page into a playlist. This is done by adding our JavaScript to your page.

How Do I Get Started?

1. Link to audio
Insert one or more anchor elements containing the URL of an audio file into your web page. For example:

<a href="example1.mp3">My first song</a>
<a href="example2.mp3">My second song</a>

2. Embed the Player
Copy and paste this code into your page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://mediaplayer.yahoo.com/js"></script>

3. Use the player
This play button will appear next to each of your audio links:

WP Audio Player
WP Adudio Player is a WordPress Plug-in to play MP3 file directly into your post. It’s simple to use and customize.

You can also use this plug-in in a non-WordPress website following this tutorial.

XSPF Web Music Player
XSPF Web Music Player is a flash-based web application that uses xspf playlist format to play mp3 songs. XSPF is the XML Shareable Playlist Format. The software is written in Actionscript 2.

MC Media Player

MC Media Player is a Flash-based media player for embedding video, audio and still images in web pages. It is free to use for both non-profit and commercial websites.

There are currently two versions of the player: MC Classic (previously known as the 720×360 Edition) and MC Altair (beta).

A multi-format player that includes a playlist menu with unlimited folders. Great for displaying all your files in a single interface. Supports FLV, H.264 (mov, mp4), MP3, JPG, PNG, GIF, SWF.

A single-file video player designed to be both easy to set up and extremely customizable. Supports FLV and H.264 (progressive download and RTMP streaming).

Commercial website media players

Moyea Web Player Pro

Moyea Web Player Pro is a tool to generate flash video player for website, the flash video player is an easy and convenient way to add single or multiple video in any formats to any websites, including video share sites, company websites, your blog, Myspace, forum,etc. In addition, it enables you to add as many advertisements (Ads) as you like into any video at any point-in-time, regardless of the number and kind of the Ads. It is really a nice feature that you can insert ads into the videos.

Generates a full-screen capable flash video player for web site, empowers you to easily add videos to web site, blog or e-store. There are several templates and skins available for this player.

Moyea Web Player Pro accepts flash video(FLV and MP4, MOV, 3GP, 3G2 with H.264 codec) , and offers a free video converter to ensure you can add videos in all formats to website.

Any FLV Player

Any FLV Player is an easy-to-use web video player utility for playing FLV (MPEG-4 encoded video file for Flash) files on the Internet.

• Any FLV Player is an easy-to-use web video player utility for playing FLV (MPEG-4 encoded video file for Flash) files on the Internet.
• Fully customized play control panel
• Themes for web videos
• Parameter settings for web videos
• Show/Hide of video play list and playback feature
• Publish your FLV video to website with a few clicks
• Automatically inject FLV video meta information
• Drag and drop to play FLV files. No flash development environment required
• Resizable windows plus zoom 1x, 2x and full screen mode
• Convenient to get ready-made files for Dreamweaver or FrontPage
• Single/batch FLV video(s) input
• Single/batch video conversion of various formats into FLV or other formats

Take a look at some live demos

agriya FLV Player

This Player has many features and is really worth taking a look at. There are three versions Mini FLV Player, Premium FLV Player and Elite FLV Player.

• works on all major social networking sites
• XML-driven, i.e. admin can control everything just via XML.
• It supports the following protocols: Progressive (HTTP based), Streaming (RTMP and lighttpd based streaming), Works seamlessly with akamai and other streaming media solutions
• Advertisements Support, supports Pre-Roll and Post-Roll Ads
• Offers multilingual support
• supports the logos of SWF and JPG format.
• It supports external URL i.e. clicking on the player can link the user to an external URL. Admin can make their site open again by giving their site link as external URL, thereby getting more traffic.
• Audio Control, Video size control, Share, Repeat, Full screen, Mute button, Progress bar – all these controls can be turned on and off easily.
• It has auto-play control using which admin can make the video play automatically once loaded or make the video play only after clicking the video or play button.

Rave

This Player seam really cool. The playlist is awesome I think so check it out.

• Playlists, Rave supports Automatic, XML, XSPF, RSS, M3U, PLS and Text-Based playlists. Plus, you can even have a secondary “Plug Playlist” (for advertising purposes).
• Advertisements, Plug ads into your playlist using the plug-playlist feature.
• Skins, Have a particular look you’re trying to integrate on your site?  Got you covered. Use a pre-built skin, or design your own using the Skin Machine tool.
• Javascript, Take advantage of the built-in AJAX capabilities to control nearly every aspect of the player, plus event notification.
• Podcasting, Play a podcasts directly in your web page with Rave.
• Ecommerce, Wimpy Rave supports linking to your shopping cart from directly from the player

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