External “Video for Everybody” v2.1
The latest release of External "Video for Everybody" (v2.1) provides a critical security upgrade of the included VideoJS toolkit to version 4.0.2.
Tagged: version
vfe.sh 2.0
The latest version of vfe.sh (2.0) allows you to select whether the script will run the transcoding commands using an 'ffmpeg' or 'avconv' command. The default is ffmpeg, and it's the kind of thing one is likely set and leave, so I have added a 'converter' value in my .vferc file. On my Mac I'm using ffmpeg, and on my Ubuntu machine avconv. With avconv I found that Ogg encoding was sensitive to the audio bitrate, and that 128 was a good value. At any rate, it is now a setting that you can adjust on the command line or in your .vferc file. Lastly I added more explicit output so that you can now see in the terminal the full form of the command that the script ran for each video type.
Updated files are on:
External VfE 0.9
I have just released a new version (0.9) of the "External Video for Everybody" WordPress plugin. The new version updates to Video for Everybody 0.4.2 and also includes an option to use Steve Heffernan's VideoJS JavaScript library to provide an attractive set of video controls. The global option to use VideoJS is, by default, set to "false" but you can easily change that at the Media > External VfE options page.
VideoJS provides a nicely styled set of playback controls, including a "full screen" button, a feature that I heartily welcome. VideoJS includes a range of skins, but only the default is available for this release of my plugin. You may want to know that Heffernan, the author of VideoJS, offers his own WordPress plugin:
VideoJS - HTML5 Video Player for WordPress
The version of VideoJS in my plugin includes some customizations that should facilitate integration with a wide range of themes. At least as of version 1.1.2, VideoJS builds the video controls using ul and li tags. Not a few WordPress themes include unqualified styling for these elements which can then interfere — sometimes severely — with the layout for the controls. I have converted the ul and li tags to div tags and made the accompanying adjustments to the library's style sheet. The change seems to help considerably.
I am also exercising an option the VideoJS code provides to disable the hiding of the "downloads" section when the client's browser has playback capability. There's a double negative there. What it works out to is that I am opting to have the download links display even when playback is working.
Finally, I tweaked the function that hides the controls after four seconds so that the controls instead remain visible as long as the mouse is within the video area.
External VfE 0.7.1
External VfE 0.7.1 makes a minor change to fix a bug pointed out by a friendly reader. Thank you.
The details
The img tag in the embedded Flash object was mistakenly pointing to an .mp4 file. It will now point to whatever type of file you indicate with the "poster_extension" attribute, either in your shortcode or on the settings page.
On a related note. Even if you are opting to omit poster attributes for your HTML5 video tag, you will still get the benefit of using a poster image with the Flash object.
External VfE 0.6
Version 0.6 of the External Video for Everybody WordPress plugin allows you to designate (on the options page or within a shortcode) whether or not you wish to include a poster attribute in your HTML5 video tag. Dropping the poster follows Video for Everybody 0.4 in order enable playback on iPads. Leaving posters as an option allows each user to decide globally or on a video by video basis. You might even turn posters off but continue to create and upload them with the idea that you can turn them on when iPads can handle them. Or you can just start making your posters into the first frame of the movie.
Additionally, version 0.6 offers experimental support for video URL's that require a query string after the file name. Amazon S3 has been pointed out as a case in point, but I do not use the service, and so I cannot test whether my accommodation actually addresses the problem.