I just released v1.7 of Hana Flv Player WP plugin. The latest version has two improvements. One is to handle more advanced options of the FlowPlayer and FLV Player. (Unfortunately OS FLV does not have enough options to implement) The other is for showing FLV movie in the template theme files outside of the blog article by using a new method.

More options for the players

By using ‘more_2′ and ‘more_3′ attributes, you can use advanced features of the each player. There are tons of other options for the customization. You can use most of the options through these attributes. You can start testing by using the javascript generated provided in the settings menu.

It is mainly focused on the interface design option. After selecting the options you want, you can click the ‘Generate’ button to generate the sample usage in the output textarea.

Here are the examples from the predefined samples.
Flow: Simple Black Control Bar

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="2"
more_2="showVolumeSlider: false,showMuteVolumeButton: false, showMenu: false, controlBarBackgroundColor: 0"
/]

Flow: Controls over Video with Auto-Hide

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="2"
more_2="showVolumeSlider: false, controlsOverVideo: 'ease',controlBarBackgroundColor: -1, controlBarGloss: 'low' "
/]

Flow: Minimalist Look

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="2"
more_2="showStopButton: false, showScrubber: false, showVolumeSlider: false,showMuteVolumeButton: false, showFullScreenButton: false, showMenu: false,
controlsOverVideo: 'locked',controlBarBackgroundColor: -1,controlBarGloss: 'none',
usePlayOverlay: false "
/]

Flv: Showing Custom Logo

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="3"
more_3="top1=http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/logo.png|30|20"
/]

Insert flv into template theme files (such as sidebar.php)

Okay, here is the function that you can use in the theme template files to show FLV movie. Basically you need to use hana_flv_player_template_call method. The method takes a single argument. The argument should be just the string of the attributes of the regular usage. Just copy below code into your theme template file and edit $hana_arg colored attributes accordingly.

<?php
if (function_exists('hana_flv_player_template_call')){
	$hana_arg=" 
video='http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv'
player='2'
width='180'
height='150'
more_2=\"showStopButton: false, showScrubber: false, showVolumeSlider: false,showMuteVolumeButton: false, 
showFullScreenButton: false, showMenu: false, controlsOverVideo: 'locked',controlBarBackgroundColor: -1,
controlBarGloss: 'none', usePlayOverlay:false \"
";
	echo hana_flv_player_template_call($hana_arg);	
}
?>

And here is the screen capture image showing FLV movie in the sidebar.

Let me know if you have any question.

Related posts:

1. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin
2. Hana Code Insert WordPress Plugin
3. [WP Plugin] HANA-XML-STAT

The most well-known free tool is ‘flvtool2′ which was created by Norman Timmler (http://www.inlet-media.de/flvtool2) .

It’s pretty easy to use. You just have to type the command with -U option 'flvtool2 -U sample.flv' in the Windows command console.

However, if you have multiple FLV files to work on, this can be rather boring repetitive work. Yes, you may create a batch file and execute them all at once, but still the task requires too much manual typing.

So I decided to create a simple front GUI frontend to embed Metadata for the multiple flv data with few clicks. And, here is my SarahFlvtool2. It is a Windows GUI helper for flvtool2.

1. Once you unzip the downloaded file, open the unzipped folder and run ’sarahflvtool2.exe’
2. Click the ‘Browse Flv’ button. And select .flv files. You can select multiple files by using ‘Shift’ or ‘Ctrl’ at the same time while clicking.
3. You can review the list of the flv files to embed Metadata. If you want to remove some from the listview, select the unwanted flv in the listview and right click then select ‘remove’.
4. Click on the ‘Run flvtool2.exe’ button. The embedding process will start and the status will be updated in the listview.
5. When all tasks are completed, a dialog box will appear to notify you the completion

Screen captures

Flv File Selection Dialog. You can select multiple files by clicking with ‘Shift’ or ‘Ctrl’ key pressed.

You can remove unwanted item from the listview with right mouse click.

Short alert before starting the embedding process.

The files are being embedded with Metadata. It is showing the status of each file.

Now the whole process is completed and you can upload the files into your webserver.

SarahFlvtool2 was created using AutoHotKey(Windows Macro Automation software which is free). And it is free to use my SaraFlvtool2.

Enjoy.

I will talk about how to setup streaming service in detail soon. Basically, you need additional software installed which I really didn’t like (too lazy and worried if I might break anything). But, I did find a somewhat easier way that can be done without installing any extra software. So come back soon!

Here is the sample of my streaming video! Try to move around the position cursor of the player.

Related posts:

1. How to add Streaming Video in your website 1 – create a Flash Video FLV
2. Easy Offline Microsoft Windows and Office Update
3. RocketDock – Windows App Launcher

Change Log

• V 2.0 (7/23/2009) :
  1. For easier Hana Flv Video tag creation, new popup dialog is added. You can directly define the values using the form and click OK to create the tag. Please see the screenshot 4 for the example. The buttons in the editor will only appear for WP v2.5+

  

• v 1.8 (7/21/2009) :
  1. Fixed Minor bug with FlowPlayer v2 . It was not properly showing under IE7.
  2. FlowPlayer v3.1.1 player is added. Originally intended to upgrade the old version, but decided to leave old version due to some minor differences.
• v 1.7: Adding additional attributes for the players more advanced options. Also added a method to show FLV movie within the theme template files (such as sidebar.php)
• v 1.5: Adding FLV Player Maxi
• v 1.1: Lots of debuging.
• v 1.0: Initial Release with OS FLV (GPL) , FlowPlayer (GPL) flv players

Now you can easily embed the FLV Flash videos in your WordPress Blog. I have packaged the two GPL FLV Flash player, OS FLV and FlowPlayer. So you can use them freely without worries even for the commercial purpose unlike the JW player – If you have AdSense or display ads showing , you should purchase the player according to its website.

Flv Player MAXI

FlowPlayer V2

OS FLV

Flow Player V3

Installation

1. Download and unzip the zip file. Upload hana-flv-player folder with all of its contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the `Plugins` menu in WordPress Admin Interface.
3. Adjust the default settings in the ‘Settings’ menu in the Admin Interface if you want to.
4. Use [hana-flv-player video=’…’ /]in your blog article. Attribute `video` is the only mandatory item where you define the video file. It can be full URL or absolute or relatvie path.

If you want a quick test and see if it’s working fine, goto Hana Flv Player settings admin page and copy the example shown in the bottom and paste in your blog article.

How to use

When you write an article , you can use [hana-flv-player /] tag to embed the flash video player. The ‘video’ attribute is mandatory to indicate the video file . There are other optional attributes and the default values for the options can be defined in the Admin settings page. See the below for the example.

This is minimum usage format.

[hana-flv-player video="http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv" /]

This is usage with all attributes defined.

[hana-flv-player
    video="http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
    width="400"
    height="320"
    clickurl="http://yourwebsite.com/"
    player="2"
    autoplay="false"
    loop="false"
    autorewind="true"
    splashimage="http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/splash.jpg"
/]

Attributes explained:

• video: URL of the flv video file. This is mandatory.
• width: Width of the Flash player.
• height: Height of the Flash player.
• clickurl: If you want to open a website when a user clicks on the video, you can define the target website URL here.
• player: If set to “1″ , OS FLV will be used. If set to “2″, FlowPlayer V2 will be used. “3″ is for FLV Player Maxi. “4″ is the new FlowPlayer V3.
• autoload: If true, the movie will be loaded (downloaded). If false, the starting screen will be blank since no video is downloaded.
• autoplay: If true, the movie will play automatically when the page is loaded.
• loop: If Loop is true, the movie will replay itself constantly.
• autorewind: If AutoRewind is true, the cursor will be reset to the start of the movie when the movie is ended.
• splashimage: Only works with FlowPlayer. When autoload is off, this splash image will be shown in the player. It only supports JPEG images.

If you want to try the plugin quickly, you can just copy and paste the tag Example showing in the Plugin Setting page. The plugin comes with a small FLV file for testing so you will be able to see it.

Leave comment if you have any questions.

Have a nice day.

There are more samples for the advanced options.

Here are some useful books on Wordpress Plugin and SEO.

WordPress Plugin Development (Beginner’s Guide)
From the reader’s review :
This book talks about the why and how of WordPress plugin development with heavy emphasis on the “how”. The book’s tagline “Learn by doing: less theory, more results” describes the book quite well. There is an introductory chapter that talks about the many benefits of learning WordPress plugin development. After that, the book immediately jumps right into showing you how to develop a series of 6 increasingly challenging WordPress plugins from scratch. It then finishes up by talking about plugin localization, promotion, and support tips.

WordPress for Business Bloggers: Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced plug-ins, analytics, advertising, and SEO
From the reader’s review: I have purchased and studied many technical books, this is the first book I felt a need to write a review. I find it well organized and understandable. The information concerning plug ins and the proper process is extremely valuable. I have only read about half way through the book, but I understand more about WordPress than I thought possible. The ability shown how to design the blog on your own computer and then upload it to your host is priceless. I highly recommend this book!

Related posts:

1. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin v1.7
2. Hana Code Insert WordPress Plugin
3. How to add Streaming Video in your website 2 – embed Flash Video Player

Now that I have converted my old video files into Flash Video files, what do I need to do to add them in my website? I wondered.

The answer: You will need to have the Flash swf component that will play your FLV video files which will be embeded in your web page. And install or save it in your website. And add addtional javascript or embed elements in your webpage. See Wikipedia page for more information.

So I spent some time googling and tried to find free or open source (So I can probably improve it after I learn Flash ) FLV flash player. In this Wikipedia Flash Video page, there are several players listed.

• Web-Anatomy FLV Player : for Web, but Free only for Non-Commercial
• Applian FLV Player : This is Desktop FLV player which we don’t need
• Martijn DeVisser’s FLV Player : Also desktop player
• Sonettic Cinema FLV Player : It has a free version . Doesn’t say anything about non-commercial , so I guess I can use it, but it says something about the latest Flash Player is required to play it. Hmm.
• Wimpy Desktop FLV Player : Desktop player
• Flowplayer embeddable video player : This is for web.
• OS FLV – the Open Source, embeddable FLV player : This is for web, too
• Moyea Desktop Flash Player : Desktop Player
• nFLV Player – Able to play unrewindable/unforwardable .flv videos : Desktop player
• SWF & FLV Player (Mac OS-X) : Desktop for Mac OS-X

Also another player , JW Media Player is well-known but it is also free only for non-commercial. According to the website, you should buy commercial liscence if you have ads in your website such as Adsense or display banners. So basically this is not a solution for me at least.

And I do not like such limitation. Free for all cases is what I would really want. So I choose FlowPlayer and OS FLV as they are under GPL licenses.

Flow Player

Flow Player is in fact very mature and has very nice advanced features that other players do not have – such as playing muliple flv vides at once and javascript functions to control the player functions. I haven’t had the time to check out the advanced features yet, but I will write another article on that when I have the chance.

1. Download the zip file from here and unzip and upload the files into your website.

2. I have uploaded directly into the HTML document root path so the URL of the path is http://www.neox.net/flowplayer.

3. Now open the exmple file by accessing http://yourwebsite.com/flowplayer/html/example.html. And view the pages HTML source.
I have restructured the code layout so only absolutely need parts are showing below example.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.neox.net/flowplayer/html/flashembed.min.js"></script>
 
<div id="flow_example"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
//window.onload = function() {  
    flashembed("flow_example",
      {
         src:'http://www.neox.net/flowplayer/FlowPlayerDark.swf',
                        width: 400,
                        height: 300
      },
      {config: {
                        videoFile: 'http://www.neox.net/video/babyhana.flv',
                        autoPlay: false,
                        initialScale: 'fit',
                        loop: false,
                        autoRewind: true,
                        autoBuffering: true
      }}
   );
//}
</script>

4. As you can see, it is pretty straight forward. You will need to change javascript source file path, flash player path and videoFile path. Additionally, you can play around with various option such width and height of the player.

Some more explanation;

• autoPlay: Setting true will make the player start to play the movie as soon as the web page is loaded.
• loop: Settig true will make the player replay the movie continuously
• autoRewind: Move the position back to start after the view
• autoBuffering: Setting true will preload the movie file.

If you are concerned with your website’s bandwidth usage , you should not set autoPlay to true. By setting autoPlay to true, whenever a user visits your webpage, the movie file is automatically downloaded to the client’s computer consuming the bandwidth. Also, you should set autoBuffering to false since it automatically downloads the file to client’ computer too.

But if you want the users to see the still image of the movie file but dont’ want the client to preload or pre-down the whole movie file, there is another option splashImageFile. You can define URL or absolute or relative path of a JPEG image file. (The website says only JPEG is supported) and when defined only the image file will be downloaded and shown in the player.

See below for the usage example.

  {config: {
                        videoFile: 'http://yourwebsite/video/test.flv',
                        autoPlay: false,
                        initialScale: 'fit',
                        loop: false,
                        autoRewind: true,
                        autoBuffering: true,
                        splashImageFile: 'http://yourwebsite.com/image.jpg'
 
      }}

If you want simpler way to generate the code, you can use below simple code generator for your conveniences. You can just copy and paste output from the textarea into your html.

FlowPlayer HTML codes generator

OS FLV player

Now, OS FLV is another promissing player. It is under GPL lisence and open source. I admit that this one is not stable as FlowPlayer but it is nice to try other player.

1. Download the zip file from here and unzip and upload the files into your website.

2. I have changed the default folder name ‘player2′ to ‘flv’ to easy recognize what it is. I uploaded directly into the HTML document root path so the URL of the path is http://www.neox.net/flv.

3. Now open the exmple file by accessing http://yourwebsite.com/flv/Firefox%20codegenerator.html. It is basically an embed code generator you can start to use it right away. This script only runs with Firefox browser.

But this generator has a little problem. You can not use this script if the calling webpage does not reside within the same folder where the SWF player is located. (For my example, ‘/flv’ folder)

So I have fixed and added a new input field to define the OS FLV folder. So the embed output can be used with any webpages.

• Width and Height: width and height of the player
• Autoplay: will play the video automatically when the webpage is loaded
• Autoload: will preload the flv file
• Autorewind: will rewind the video and put the position back to start
• Loop: will continuously replay

As I mentioned on the bandwidth usage, if you are concerned on too much bandwidth usage, you should not check the autoplay and autoload option. But disable these features make the player’s initial screen empty black. If you would like to show the still image of the video (just like YouTube) , you will need to enable autoload. But it will make the client to download the full file which will consume the bandwidth. There is no other options to resolve this issue at this moment.

See below for the example embed code output.

<script src='/flv/AC_RunActiveContent.js' language='javascript'></script>
<script language='javascript'>
 AC_FL_RunContent('codebase', 'http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0', 
 	'width', '400', 'height', '300', 'src', ((!DetectFlashVer(9, 0, 0) && DetectFlashVer(8, 0, 0)) ? '/flv/player8' : '/flv/player'),
 	'pluginspage', 'http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer', 'id', 'flvPlayer', 'allowFullScreen', 'true', 
 	'movie', ((!DetectFlashVer(9, 0, 0) && DetectFlashVer(8, 0, 0)) ? '/flv/player8' : '/flv/player'), 'FlashVars', 
 	'movie=/video/babyhana.flv&bgcolor=0x051615&fgcolor=0x13ABEC&volume=&autoload=off&autorewind=on&clickurl=&clicktarget=');
</script>
<noscript>
 <object width='400' height='300' id='flvPlayer'>
  <param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'>
  <param name='movie' value='/flv/player.swf?movie=/video/babayhana.flv&bgcolor=0x051615&fgcolor=0x13ABEC&volume=&autoload=on&autorewind=on&clickurl=&clicktarget='>
  <embed src='/flv/player.swf?movie=/video/babayhana.flv&bgcolor=0x051615&fgcolor=0x13ABEC&volume=&autoload=on&autorewind=on&clickurl=&clicktarget=' width='400' height='300' allowFullScreen='true' type='application/x-shockwave-flash'>
 </object>
</noscript>

Conclusion

There are many Flash embedable player out there, but I introduced only the GPL license and opensource ones for you can use for any purpose non-commercial or commercial. Flowplayer is stable and feature rich player and OSFLV player is simple and comes with an easy-to-use embed code generator. But you can also create the embed codes for Flowplayer using my simple form above, too.

Personally I like FlowPlayer and will spend some more time finding out the advanced features.

Have a nice day.

Previous: How to add Streaming Video in your website 1 – create a Flash Video FLV

Related posts:

1. How to add Streaming Video in your website 1 – create a Flash Video FLV
2. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin
3. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin v1.7

Most of them are based on the FFmpeg LGPL software and other open source utilities. FFmpeg is a great piece of software, but it contains only console commands and does not come with any fancy Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). Basically these freewares that I will initroduce act as a the front GUI for FFmpeg. So FFmpeg is not for a casual innocent PC user.

I tried several freewares. Some are worthless to mention and some are very nice. There are the three finalists.

• MediaCoder
• Any Video Converter
• Super

MediaCoder

This is probaly the most powerful video format converter with the every options that you will ever need.
You can drag and drop the source files just like Any Video Converter. And you can play around with the option contol in the lower pane. Note that it shows nice little summery of the output file format and expected size if you click on the ‘Summery’ tab. When you’re done with changing the options, you click on the ‘Start’ Button to execute the conversion. The output file will be created in the same folder where the original source file is located by default.

Here is the description from the website.

MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time and at this moment, it already has millions of users from 170+ countries all over the planet.

And Here are the supported formats ( * supported as input only)

MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+v2, MusePack, Speex, AMR, WMA, RealAudio, mp3PRO*
FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, TTA, WAV/PCM, Waveform
H.264, XviD, DivX, MPEG 1/2/4, Theora, Flash Video, Dirac, 3ivx*, RealVideo*, Windows Media Video
AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, PMP, RealMedia*, ASF, Quicktime*, OGM*
CD, DVD, VCD, SVCD, CUESheet*, HTTP*, FTP*, RTSP*, UDP*

When I tried to convert wmv to avi, it did work fine. But when I tried wmv to flv conversion. ffmpeg.exe has crashed and MediaCoder did not respond properly so I had to close it.

• Interface: 7 of 10
• Easy to use: 5 of 10
• Available functions/options: 10 of 10
• Stability: 6 of 10
• To Flv conversion: Didn’t work
• Final Verdict: It’s OK if you want to control all the details of the output video.

Any Video Converter

As I metioned in my article on creating a flv file, Any Video Coverter has pretty and easy to use interface. It says to support DVD (mpg), MPEG-I (mpg), MPEG-II (mpg), Flash Video(flv), mobile MPEG-4 (mp4), AVI, and WMV. You can cross convert any way you want among the mentioned endodings. You can just drag and drop source files into the left large pane and select the target encoding types and optinally video and audio options (such as resolution and framerates) and click on the Encode button. Viola! and your done.
Also it has a capability to convert video from YouTube directly and store it in to local hard drive in the format you want.

When you first run the software, make sure to set the output folder by click on ‘File’ and ‘Set Output Folder’ menus. Whenever you convert the videos, the output files will be stored in this default Output Folder you define here.

Make sure you check the output options everytime you run the software. These settings are memorized and loaded by Any Video Converter and will be used as default options. So when you set the output resolution very low the last time then you will end up with the low resolution again if you don’t change them properly.

One thing I hated about this software is that whenever the conversion is completed, you get a popup dialog asking you to try pro version. But hey I can live with that.

• Interface: 10 of 10
• Easy to use: 9 of 10
• Available functions/options: 5 of 10
• Stability: 9 of 10
• To Flv conversion: works great.
• Final Verdict: Very Good!

Super

When you run the app, you will most like to see this warning popup messages. It may say that few requirements do not meet. I got this impression that I may not be able to use this software, but please try . It usually works even it you see this warning messages. However, it seems that SUPER does use some large amount of computer memory during the conversion. The warning message says 176 additional free memory is required.

SUPER supports lot of converting options , more than Any Video Converter, but less than MediaCoder. It supports various types of format including ususal WMV, MPEG, MP4, AVI, FLV, ASF, and so on. But this one supports output format of unusual ones such as MOV, OGG, 3GP,and more. Also , it has automode that you can convert files for iPod, Zune, Nintendo DS, and Sony PS3! That’s a great help! But unfortuantely I do not have any of those devices. If I had one, I could have done the testings.

You should first select the output folder by right clicking and selecting ‘Output File Saving Management’. All the converted output files will be stored this default output folder. Now you are ready to convert some video files.

First select the output file format you want. And optinally change the Video and Audio options. They fairly easy to change. Then drag and drop the source files in the lower pane. And finally click on the Encode Button.

It appears little unstable even though it does the work. It seems that the SUPER uses up too much system resources during the conversion because I had hard time working with other softwares. Also the output data quality seems a little lower than what I defined in the options panel. I am not really sure.

Some notes. I am telling you that I had difficult time to find the download link. I guess the creator wanted you to read what he has to say about the software and the introductions. When you visit the website, search for “downloading” keyword and it will bring you to the download link directly.

Also, the main window automatically moved into the center of the screen whenever I changed the option or click buttons. That bugged me a lot.

• Interface: 8 of 10
• Easy to use: 7 of 10
• Available functions/options: 8 of 10
• Stability: 7 of 10
• To Flv conversion: did work
• Final Verdict: Nice if you want support for uncommon formats or easy conversion for the other media divces.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want something easy to use for just simple format conversion, such as AVI or WMV to FLV , then use Any Video Converter. If you want to find out detailed specification abou the video files and want to have all the access to the options, MediaCoder is your solution. If you want non common video conversion for handheld devices such as iPod or Sony PSP, probably SUPER is the best option. (I think you can also do the conversion for handheld devices with MediaCoder through the presets.)

My favorite is Any Video Converter for I am a simple minded person

I hope this information helps you to end your quest for the free video conversion software , too.

Related posts:

1. How to add Streaming Video in your website 1 – create a Flash Video FLV
2. How to add Streaming Video in your website 2 – embed Flash Video Player
3. PrimoPDF – Free PDF converter

But now that many movie sharing web sites are using Flash Video ( files extension .flv) I decided to take some time to learn how to embed streaming video to a website using Freewares.

Flash Video is a technology that supports streaming video naturally using Adobe Flash Player. You do not need to buy that expensive streaming media server for this. Users do require to install Adobe Flash Player in their computer in order to view this Flash videos. But most of the casual users already have the Flash installed so don’t worry. You can learn all about the Flash Video technology at Flash Video Wikipedia.

Note that if you are looking for an easy solution, you should think about utilizing sharing services such as YouTube. It’s a great service that you can upload regular movie files – such as .avi, .wmv – and it will be automatically converted to flash video. Once you upload your movie, you will get little html <embed> code snippets that you can insert to your web page.

This approach is probably more common and better if you just need to add some videos with out too much hassle. Also, this is important. The streaming data is directly coming from the YouTube server to the users’ web browser, therefore it does not consume your web server’s bandwitdh at all! That’s a big relief if you are using cheap hosting service with very small bandwidth limit.

However, YouTube’s video quality is low(320X240). Even if your original video data is high quality , it will be converted to low quality during the data upload. Of course, this is to save some bandwidth for YouTube and I do understand. (By the way, I heard that there is a little hack that you can see higher resolution from YouTube. See here for the details)

If you want better resolution than 320X240 and/or if you do not want to “YouTube” logo showing in the flash player, you can continue reading my article.

So my instruction is how to create and add Flash video to your website. And note that this will result high bandwidth usage charge from your ISP since the Stream data will be coming from your web server to the users’ web browser. If your hosting service package’s bandwidth usage is unlimited, you can go head and set this up happily.

Now there will be two tasks involved in my instruction.

1. How to create a FLV file.
2. How to setting up Streaming Flash Video Player in your web server and WordPress.

1. How to create a Flash video file?

First, you will need to convert your existing video file to Flash Video format (.flv extension)
There are virtually too many video related softwares out there in the Internet. Most of them are shareware and probably there would be limitations. So I searched for the Freeware version of this AVI , WMV to FLV conversion software.

I have tried several to-FLV conversion softwares, but this I guess this software does it for me.

Any Video Converter has a very slick interface for a Freeware. In fact , it is very powerful that not even AVI, WMV to FLV conversion, you can do almost any convertion interchangably between DVD, AVI, WMV, MPEG, MP4 and FLV. I would not ask for more. Also it has a capability to convert video from YouTube directly and store it in to local hard drive in the format you want.

Anyway, I am going to explain how to convert a video file to FLV.

After you first install the software, the first thing you want to do is to set the default output folder.
Click on the File menu and select ‘Set Output Folder…’ menu to set it up. This is important folder because otherwise Any Video Converter does not alert the output file information whenever you convert the files. So when the conversion is completed , you just know that the output files are located in this output folder.

1. Drag and Drop Source data. Then the file will be listed in the screen. Select the video file by clicking on it.
2. Select the output video format. You can also select the specific length to convert , and data quality and size of the output video. However the function to define the range is kind of unstable. When I tried it, the output file contained different portion of the video from what I defined.
3. Click on the ENCODE button and wait for the conversion to be finished.
4. Check the default output folder you defined for the converted output files.

That is pretty easy right? I like the software. I give 8 out of 10 because , it asks a question to try pro version whenever you complete a conversion.

Also please see my other article on the Video format converter, if you are looking for more options.

This is getting long , so I will come back later to finish the “How to setting up Streaming Flash Video Player in your web server and WordPress” part.

Before I let you go, see below for the resolution comparison.

This is FLV Flash Movie file in my server converted from WMV format. The original resolution remains the same. 600X480 and the video quality is much better than YouTube which is 320X240.

This is YouTube.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please come back for more on “How to add Streaming Video in your website” later.

Have a good one.

Next : How to add Streaming Video in your website 2 – embed Flash Video Player

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