player

Morty and Dave have been talking for some time about developing a player for Outhink.

How we'd use a player

(Notes: Descriptions here are still a bit superficial and do not yet address how player would actually be used. Also, no costs/benefits are discussed e.g., player embeds will likely result in significant increased web and database server loads, no discussion of statistics gathering, etc)

Here are some thoughts:

• We could use a player to showcase our technology and our media on our sites, as well as a viral tool to get our branding, content, channels, playlists and feeds distributed to a wide readership/viewership.

• We would hire a contractor (perhaps Enric) to build this for us after we complete a spec for the player as a team. It should take several weeks, not 6 months, to build. The player that Markus has built for Ourmedia already gets us halfway there (i assume). (Markus: assumption is incorrect. Player is already built. A new player can not be dropped in it's place. A Drupal coder or system admin is what we need to extend existing player to meet additional requirements once they are actually determined)

• We want a media player that handles lots of different media types, including Flash, quicktime, windows media, real, mpeg4, ogg, and audio files like mp3 and wav. (Markus: you have one - except for ogg - that does not see possible at this time)

• It shouldn't require users to download plug-ins to work (though an occasional prompt might be ok). Needless to say, it shouldn't crash anyone's machine. (Markus: plug-ins are required; crashes related to plug-ins are not generally under our control)

• It could be used on our sites (Ourmedia, SpinXpress, Freevlog) as we'd like, as well as made available to users to embed on their own blogs and sites. This would be particularly valuable for users who subscribe to channel feeds.

• Features would include: play; stop; pause; fast forward; rewind; sound volume; download the video/mp3 file; subscribe to the feed; mail/share; embed the player; and, perhaps, full screen or detach. And, there would have to be a way to sort through programs, either as thumbnails or lists. (Markus: we can do most of these, but not all options are supported by all the requested video types).

• Branding: My initial thought is to call this the Ourmedia Player. We could customize the skin as needed for each site. (Markus: the Ourmedia Player is indeed it's name, but we do not say that anywhere. Current branding includes Ourmedia logo and name of channel. Player skin only has a few customizable elements, mainly the logo, default images, buttons, font and colors).

Player mockup

From Michael:

Formats supported via browser plugins:
QuickTime 7: .mov, .mp4, .m4v, .m4a
Windows Media plugin, Flip4Mac: .wmv, .wma (windows media 7, 8, 9)
Flash 9 plugin: Flash video 7, 8, 9, .mp3

Customizable
Each outlined div can be configured with a background color or image,
outline or not.
Fonts and text & link colors can be selected.

Controls:
Play All: automatically plays each video in the list.
Back & Forward: moves through the thumbnails in the list but doesn't
change what's playing.
Current video is highlighted in the list
Selecting a video from the list instantly makes it the current video
and starts the playlist from that point.

List Creation Interface
User supplies permalink and the rest of the info is pulled from the
page including a thumbnail which is resized to fit the list. User can
confirm the info and change/fix any of it before saving.
List items can be reorded with drag and drop interface (think Flickr sets)

Other list creation tools
Bookmarklet
Import RSS Feeds
Import del.icio.us, ourmedia, blip, technorati tags

Video Info from RSS imports
It really important to have the permalink be the blog permalink if
available and not the Ourmedia node, Blip page, etc.

Players to look at

(Note: some of these are desktop clients and so many of their features do not apply in web browser setting)

• SplashCast has a Flash player.

• Brightcove has a very nice player. You can see it in action here.

• Blip has a customized player.

• Zune Arts has a player, also seen at Zune.

• Imeem has a video player and audio player with playlists.

• Fora.tv has a customized Flash player. Looks nice, but plays only Flash video.

• Democracy Player (soon to be called Miro) has a downloadable program for watching video and media files.

• Esnips has a radio player

• This Week in Tech has an audio player

• One True Media has a video widget that you can share.

Markus has several backgrounders about media players on the wiki here.

From Markus:

• converting to use a group channel feed

• basic look and feel can be the same (i.e., thumbs and play button)

• support for more media types (e.g., flv, m4v, ogg, streaming, etc)

• make use of flash player or offer multiple formats (flv, mov, wmv)

• auto thumb generation

• support for ourmedia vs. offsite revlogging

• this is how it looks in current theme: