Chromeless YouTube
Posted on Sunday, June 13th - 2010
The Widget in Action
This chromeless YouTube player enables you to easily display videos on your site. Each player instance displays a different video and can be resized.
How to use the player ->
The Long Description ->
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Player Use
Installation:
- Install the player automatically using the WordPress plugin installer or proceed to step 2.
- Download the source code manually then upload the 'chromeless-youtube' folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
- Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
Player Setup:
- Create a new player by dragging the Chromeless YouTube widget into an active sidebar. Widgets accessed through the wordpress dashboard: Appearance -> Widgets
- Open you new widget to access the options.
- Widget Title: Title text will be displayed above the video player as an <h3> heading, leave blank for no title.
- YouTube Video ID: Enter the YouTube video id number of the video you want to play. Ex: hnwccozR_oI
- Enter the player Width and Height in pixels. If your video has black bars simply change the size until they are gone. Some trial and error may be necessary to get it perfect.
- Autoplay: Check this box if you want your video to automatically start playing.
- Show original YouTube controls: Check this box to use the original YouTube controls and buttons.
- Shortcode for posts: Copy the purple colored snippet and then and paste it into any post to display an instance of the player. Don't forget to change the ID number.
- PHP for templates: Copy snippet and then and paste it into a WordPress template file. Use the shortcode above for reference, the last two arguments, no and no are for autoplay and the YouTube controls.
Important Note: Only one instance of a particular video (One ID number) can be played on any one page. Depending on your browser, pages loaded into one browser tab may interfere with videos with the same ID on other tabs.
Description
This plugin is a custom YouTube video player. The default player settings are to remove the original YouTube buttons. The buttons are replaced by "custom video" controls that are hidden while the video is playing. Don't worry, there is an option to use the default YouTube controls if you want. The player is meant to play only one single video, by simply entering it's YouTube ID number. You can then size the player to any width and height, enabling you to display videos anywhere on your site. Every chromeless widget you create is unique, you can have multiple videos on one page, each with a different source and size.
To make a long description short, this plugin is a must have for any WordPress user. Adding videos to your site has never been easier. Considering that YouTube hosts over 35% of the video media on the internet, is would be silly to not capitalize on their simple yet powerful website, and to use it to upload and store all of your videos.
Now to display these videos on your site, you need to embed a whole bunch of HTML embed snippets and code for each YouTube video on your site is tedious and not necessary!
The Chromeless YouTube Player is super easy, just drag a widget into your sidebar, type in the YouTube ID number of the video, give it a width and height and that is it.
Please leave a comments or questions I will personally attend to them and respond as soon as possible.
36 Responses to “Chromeless YouTube”
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Love this plugin, but I find it a chore to add the videos to posts. Unless I'm missing something I need to activate it as a widget to get the code for the video. If there was a link in the post section where the shortcode could be copied it would help alot. Otherwise great plugin.
You can use that shortcode over and over, it is generic, just put the required data in, like the url of your video. You don't need to create widgets to show a player in a post, just put the shortcode in.
Yeah I know I don't need to have the widget active, just saying it would make it alot easier to have a shortcode button to press when creating a post.
Thanks for your input! I am developing a video player plugin right now and am considering adding that functionality. Once I figure out how to implement it I will add it to the Chromeless player.
noticing that your autoplay doesnt work in the main blog feed using wp 3.0.1, any insights?
I will take a look at it this weekend. Make sure that you only have one instance of a video, only one of the same video url will play at once on some systems.
Any updates planned for this? Looking forward to a new version
There are always plans, finding the time is the hard part. Thanks for your enthusiasm zeaks.
I have a weird problem. I can get the plugin to work on some posts, but no on others. Using the exact same code (only one instance at a time). I can get it to work on a very busy post with amazon product feeds, seo flim flam, etc. But on a simple blank post, with the exact same short code, no go. Any ideas?
fyi I even tried it with the short code you give above, with the video ID unchanged to make sure it wasn't something to do with my video. Same result.
Sounds like it might be theme related, if you send me a link to the pages that it won't display on I can take a quick look to see if I can see what went wrong.
at http://electronic-pictureframe.org I have pasted the short code from your installation page on the most recent two posts ('Test' and 'Coby'). On the Coby post, you can see it midway down the page, but on the Test post, with nothing else to compete with, it doesn't show up. It may not be your plugin at all, as I tried directly embedding the YT video on the page, and that didn't work either. Count me stumped...
Thanks!
Tom
I'm coming to the conclusion that is has something to do with the Amazon feed plugin I am using. I will check in with the developer of that plugin.
confirmed it is a conflict with Auto estore plugin. Thanks for your help regardless!
hello, awesome plugin! Is it possible to remove the "get" button on the player? I'd like it to just have play, pause, and the rewind.
thanks again for your great work!
Sorry, the get button is hardcoded into the .swf file, I will think about adding options to the buttons when I do an update. I have been so busy as of late with my 20 month old and have not had much time to work on plugins.
Hey! great extension!
Now that I hear you are planning for an update, let me put up my wish list too lol :)
1) Option to allow uploaded flv files to be played too..not youtube etc but my own files on my own server.
2) Option to remove the "Get" button
3) Also I notice several times when the page with the player loads, it shows just a black face rather than an image from the video. (using WP 3.04)
Thanks in advance.
Hi
Whenever i install on a post i cant get the thumbnail to display - just a black screen - how do i get a thumb to show?
Sorry but there is no thumbnail routine supported in the plugin. A work around would be to trim the beginning of your video so the first frame is not black. Otherwise I would recommend flowplayer or jw player.
any chance that your plugin stop after playing and not end with the up next you tube video screen
thanks
I will revisit this comment when I have time to do an update. Thanks
Love this plugin!
Is there any way to start in HQ mode without having the user to select it?
Thanks in advance!
Not at this point, will look into that for the upgrade
Hey- I got the plugin to work perfectly on a webpost. Problem is, the video doesn't appear if i go to the site via my smart phone. Any ideas?
If your smart phone does not support flash that might be the problem. If you direct embed youtube videos most apple products will play the video using the phones youtube player. I am planning an upgrade to the plugin but am really backed up at work right now.
Thanks so much for this great plugin.
Is there any way I can make it so that controls are completely inaccessible no matter what?
No, but if you have any actionscript 3 or flash experience I can email you the .fla file if you want to edit and remove the controls.
I do have a little experience. I'd love it if you could email it to me, and if it's over my head, so be it. I appreciate the help!
Hi Adam,
your plugin is great and simple, but I have one question about it:
After page loading and when video appear in window I hear a small sound "noise" which comes from video sound, although I have autoplay disabled...
This feature occurs on your site too ...
Indeed, I noticed that a while ago but have not come up with a fix yet. I think it is only a problem if the video has sound at 0:00, If you have a really important video on your site just make sure it has some silence in the beginning.
I have a database and inside this database I have a table with a column called "visual" which simply contains the Youtube movie id. (basically the same thing you have hardcoded into your sample).
I want to be able to pull the variable from my database so that it populates the youtube video into my page template based on the dynamic variable. I tried the code below, but with no luck.
Any thoughts?
code didnt post .. here is what I thought would work but doesnt.
php chromeless_youtube ('."$visual".','395','350','no','no')
try this:
chromeless_youtube ($visual,'395','350','no','no')
Hi Adam,great plugin! I saw above that you said you could possibly send the fla file so we could edit it. Really what i want to do is just get rid of the background color . Is it possible for you to send it to me? I would really appreciate it! I was actually working on a flash player and i was going to embed the videos that way, but for whatever reason, WordPress is giving me a hard time with skins!
Thanks so much!
Kathy
I gotta say this is the most genius and needed app ever! I was looking for a way topost youtube vids on my profile with a shortcode that would block people from being able to use my video without referencing the post but the issue is this plug in is flash based... not good for ipads and iphones. Very limiting nowadays.
If you make a version that is html 5 based or somehow doesnt require flash please please please let me know. This is the sickest plugin idea, but times are changing so fast and so many people are using ipads and iphones to read blog posts. Stuff not optimzed for those audiences is very limiting!
Please email me personally when u get that. Also the idea of having an icon in the blog post section is totally a great one. I was wanting that too. or someway to load it in as a premade shortcode. that'd be huge!!
Thanx,
Look fwd to ur response.
Thanks for the feedback.