A simple package using Flowplayer for video content
Project description
Introduction
collective.flowplayer integrates the GPL version of Flowplayer with Plone 3.x. It can play .flv Flash Video files, mp4 files or links as well as .mp3 files or links.
Installation
Add collective.flowplayer to your buildout as normal. See http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout. Don’t forget to load the configure.zcml file!
Then install the product via Plone’s Add-on products control panel.
Usage
collective.flowplayer offers several different usage modes:
Standalone player
To get a standalone video or audio player, simply add a standard Plone File anywhere in your site and upload a .flv or .mp3 file. You can also add a Plone Link whose URL points to an .flv or .mp3 URL. The ‘flowplayer’ view will automatically be selected in the ‘display’ menu, which will show a video/audio player.
You can also do this manually, of course.
Playlist
Create a Folder with several .mp3 or .flv files or links, or create a Collection that lists such files or links. Then ‘flowplayer’ from the ‘display’ drop-down at the Folder/Collection level.
This will show a video/audio player that will loop through the media in the Folder/Collection (unknown file formats will be ignored) in order. The video player will be sized to fit the largest video in the playlist.
There is horizontal scrollable playlist displayed under the player by default. If you don’t want to display the playlist, switch off “showPlaylist” property in flowplayer’s configuration.
Portlet
To place a video or audio player in a portlet, use the Video Player portlet that is installed with this product. You can choose a Folder, Collection or File to display. When displaying a Folder or Collection, you will get a playlist much like the one described above.
Note that the player in the portlet has got a fixed size, set with CSS.
Inline
In each of the cases above, the video player is actually created with JavaScript as the page is loaded. This allows some degree of graceful degradation for browsers without Flash or JavaScript, but, more importantly, makes it easy to insert a video player anywhere, including in your content pages.
To create a standalone player, you would use markup like this:
<a class="autoFlowPlayer" href="path/to/video-file.flv">
<img src="path/to/splashscreen.jpg" />
</a>
You can also use a <div class=”autoFlowPlayer” /> around the <a /> tag if you prefer.
This would be replaced by a video player showing the video in video-file.flv, starting with a splash screen image from splashscreen.jpg. The image is optional, but if it is specified, the player will be sized to be identical to the image.
You can also get a more stripped-down player by using:
<a class="autoFlowPlayer minimal" href="path/to/video-file.flv">
<img src="path/to/splashscreen.jpg" />
</a>
For an audio player, you can use:
<a class="autoFlowPlayer audio" href="path/to/audio-file.mp3">
This text is replaced.
</a>
You can also use class=”autoFlowPlayer minimal audio” to get a very small audio player (essentially just a play button).
To get a playlist, you can use markup like this:
<div class="playListFlowPlayer">
<a class="playListItem" href="path/to/video.flv">Video one</a>
<a class="playListItem" href="path/to/video.flv">Video two</a>
<img src="splash.jpg" />
</div>
You can also add ‘minimal’ and/or ‘audio’ to the list of classes for the outer <div /> to change the appearance of the player, or add ‘random’ to get a randomised playlist. The splash image is optional.
Kupu integration
To make it easier to use the type of markup outlined above to insert a video or audio player into a Plone content item, this product installs a few Kupu paragraph styles. You can use them like this:
Video
Insert the image you want to use as a splash image. You should insert this “inline” (rather than left/right floating), preferably in its own paragraph.
Select on the image, and make it link to the .flv or .mp3 file you want to play.
Select one of the Video or Audio styles from the styles drop-down.
Audio
Create a link to an mp3 file, e.g. out of some text. Again, place it in its own paragraph.
Select one of the “Audio” styles from the styles drop-down. The “left” and “right” styles will produce a small player floating to the left or right. The “Audio” style will produce a larger player on its own line.
Notes
it is not possible to detect clip width/height from the mp4 file now
if your player is not displayed on the page load, but is displayed after you click somewhere to the player container area, be sure there is no HTML code nor text inside the player container HTML tag. Such code/text is considered as player splash screen and player is waiting for click to the splash.
player is correctly created only if player container is < div > element (Kupu does it automatically if Audio and Video styles are used). Using other containers (eg. p) is not supported currently.
Configuration
Flowplayer supports a large number of configuration options. A few of these will be set based on the markup used to render the player (e.g. the playlist buttons will only be rendered if there is a playlist, and most controls will be hidden in ‘minimal’ mode). Most other options can be set in the ZMI.
In portal_properties, there should be a new propertysheet called flowplayer_properties. Options set here are passed through to the player’s JavaScript configuration (make sure you use the right property type). For string properties, you can use the placeholder ${portal_url} to refer to the URL of the portal root. This is useful for things like watermark images or player plugins.
Properties starting with word “param/” are considered as Flash configuration properties. You may set properties like src (player flash file), wmode, quality, allowscriptaccess etc. Just use eg. param/wmode as property name and eg. ‘opaque’ as property value.
‘’’Important note’’’ Since playlist configuration is a generated javascript file included in portal_javascript, you must reload portal_javascript after global player configuration is changed or portal_javascript must be running in debug mode (not reccommended for production sites). Go to ZMI/portal_javascript, scroll down and pres “Save” button after your flowplayer_properties are set.
Since FlowPlayer3 uses more complex properties and plugins infrastructure, most of visual properties are defined as a plugin configuration (e.g. control bar is separate plugin with own set of properties). If you want to configure FlowPlayer3 plugin, you should define it’s flash file using property syntax eg. plugins/controls/url which generates configuration item in form:
{
plugins : {
controls : {
url : 'VALUE OF PROPERTY'
}
}
}
To configure color of control bar volumeSliderColor, define property: plugins/controls/volumeSliderColor set to value ‘lime’, which generates the following config:
{
plugins : {
controls : {
url : 'VALUE OF PROPERTY',
volumeSliderColor: 'lime'
}
}
}
All control bar configuration properties are described on Controlbar plugin documentation page.
General informations about the configuration options may be found at the FlowPlayer configuration page. Please note, it is not possible to specify events in the Plone’s flowplayer_properties sheet now (eg. onBeforeFinish event).
Useful configuration examples from http://flowplayer.org:
Extending player runtime
It is possible to extend player configuration or modify player behaviour runtime using javascript plugins. Collective.flowplayer uses flowplayer.js for embedding player into page. It is the most general version of embedding which allows all kinds of configuration of the player. Please read Documentation of Flowplayer JS API for more details. The most important for player extension is Player retrieval part and description of Player configuration and Clip configuration. A lot of player scripting examples may be found at Scripting demo page and Scripting documentation
Extending example
collective.flowplayer creates Flowplayer instance from all .autoFlowPlayer and .playListFlowPlayer containers on the page. You may retrieve first player eg. by:
$f() or flowplayer()
or iterate through all players on page using:
$f("*").each
To be able to configure player runtime, you must first create custom javascript file and include this file to page or add it to portal_javascripts registry. Since flowplayer uses jQuery to initialize itself, you must use jQuery syntax as well. Example of js skeleton:
jq(function () {
// your javascript code goes here
})
Let’s create concerete example. The most visible one is Javascript alert:
jq(function () {
$f().onPause(function() { alert("Don't pause me!")})
})
or (for all players on the page):
jq(function () {
$f("*").each( function() {
this.onPause(function() { alert("Don't pause me!")})
})
})
TIP: If you are using Firefox and have the Firebug Add-on installed, then you can try the examples yourself against every possible Flowplayer demo on flowplayer.org or your own site. Activate Firebug console and enter:
$f().onPause(function() { alert("Don't pause me!")})
Try to start/pause player now. Alert window should be displayed.
Upgrade notes
Upgrade specific notes: from 1.0 to 3.0
Flowplayer configuration changed a lot from Flowplayer 2.2 used in collective.flowplayer 1.0. Most of Flowplayer properties are migrated automatically, but there are few troubles.
Contents of “player” property is not migrated. If you are using commercial or customized version of Flowplayer2 please obtain updated version or don’t upgrade collective.flowplayer at all!
Properties usePlayOverlay, useNativeFullScreen, controlsOverVideo, controlBarGloss are not migrated and are deleted during migration process. There are no direct equivalents in Flowplayer 3
How to upgrade
force buildout to use new version of collective.flowplayer (check if version is not pinned, use bin/buildout -n)
restart zope instance
go to portal_quickinstaller or Add/Remove products controlpanel and reinstall Flowplayer product
go to ZMI - portal_setup - Upgrades tab, select collective.flowplayer:default profile, click “Choose profile” button. There should be ‘Upgrade collective.flowplayer (1.0 - 3.0)’ step available. Make sure step is checked and press Upgrade button. If the upgrade step is not shown and you are sure (even unsure) you migrated to the latest version already, press ‘Show’ button to show old upgrades and run upgrade step manually. It should be safe to run the upgrade step several times.
Read README.txt to check how to configure custom properties of your Flowplayer instance
Changelog
3.0b7 - 2010-03-14
Do not fail if Kupu is not available [naro]
added z3c.autoinclude plugin [naro]
Fixed handling of audio player if created from Kupu. [naro]
3.0b6 - 2010-03-09
Updated Flowplayer to 3.1.5
Partially fixed class=”autoFlowPlayer minimal audio”. Class minimal in combination with audio still causes problems. [naro]
3.0b5 - 2009-12-11
Removed @@ prefix from collective.flowplayer.js in javascript registry. It probably confused Safari and Chrome. Thanks dahoste for pointing to this issue. [naro]
Flowplayer updated to 3.1.4; modules updated to the latest versions [naro]
Added headerparsing to IVideo-enhanced links. This allows using the scaling property clip/scaling for links [tom_gross]
3.0b4 - 2009-10-05
Depend on plone.app.jquerytools: plone.app.jqtools was renamed and the package removed, so new installations would break. [optilude]
use IFileContent instead of IATFile to be able to handle ATBlob as well.
added empty upgrade step for such version changes which does not require any upgrade. This is not apparently good solution. [naro]
3.0b3 - 2009-09-26
URL passed to flowplayer must end with known media suffix (flv, mp3, mp4 etc.). URL http://portal/folder/myvideo is not valid source for Flowplayer, but http://portal/folder/myvideo?e=.flv is. Thanks to Milos Prudek for pointing to this issue. [naro]
3.0b2 - 2009-09-16
added missing plone.app.jqtools zcml include [naro]
It is possible to specify flash parameters using param/… properties. ‘player’ property were changed to ‘param/src’. This may be used for setting eg. param/wmode to ‘opaque’. [naro]
3.0b1 - 2009-09-15
Updated to flowplayer3 - Please read Upgrade notes and Readme
new option showPlaylist toggles horizontal playlist below the player in the folder/collection view mode. Images and styles are taken from this example: http://flowplayer.org/demos/plugins/javascript/playlist/horizontal.htm
1.0b5 - 2009-03-18
Have the event handlers make sure they’re working with an object from a site where collective.flowplayer is installed. [davisagli]
1.0b4 - 2009-03-06
Move the Plone dependency into the buildout to avoid the problem reported in http://david.wglick.org/2009/heads-up-watch-out-for-dependencies-on-plone/
1.0b3 - 2009-02-23
Added support for links
Added test coverage
1.0b2 - Released September 9th, 2008
Fixed portal_javascripts rendering traceback [optilude]
Fixed image player view bug [optilude]
1.0b1 - Released September 6th, 2008
Initial release
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