Multimedia

Multimedia Plugins

Adding multimedia to blogs is really quite easy. lets start with audio and work our way up.

  1. Audio Player
  2. Video Player
  3. Power Point Player.

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1. Streaming MP3 Audio Player - Download - (52kb)

Usage

Once installed, this plugin allows you to insert mp3 audio files into your posts and pages. Use the following syntax:

Syntax

This code will insert a flash player and will load the file named name_of_mp3_file.mp3 located in your audio files folder. You can store your audio files anywhere in the web root as long as you update the path in the plugin’s options panel. The default is /audio.

You can also use absolute paths to link to files on other servers:

Path

Audio Player can also play a sequence of audio clips. Use commas to separate the files:

Path

You can also pre-append and post-append a clip to all your players. Explained in the Podcasting section below.

Contents Examples: Default colour scheme

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Contents Podcasting

If you are using the player for a podcasting blog, Audio Player has special options just for you.

Enclosures

If you are unsure what an enclosure is, read the definition on Wikipedia. You have 3 options:

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Pre/Post appended clips

You may wish to pre-append or post-append audio clips into your players. To do this, enter the full urls in the relevant section of the options panel. The pre-appended audio will be played before the main audio, and the post-appended will come after. A typical podcasting use-case for this feature is adding a sponsorship message or simple instructions that help casual listeners become subscribers. This will apply to all audio players on your site. Your chosen audio clips should be substantially shorter than your main feature.

Contents RSS Feeds

You have a choice over what to show in your RSS feed:

Go to the options panel to set these options.

Contents The “chipmunk” effect

The Macromedia Flash player has a problem playing files that are encoded at a rate that is not a multiple of 11.025 kHz. This effect is sometimes called the “chipmunk” effect: the file is played at double speed. The MP3 standard only supports certain rates and certain combinations of rates. Also Flash can only play three of the sample rates correctly (the standard has about 8). Also if we go above bitrate 192kbs (which sounds nearly like wav quality) then the maximum playtime gets too short so we should stop at 192. Also LAME does not do every rate (but most of them).

Bitrates :

8,16,24,32,40,48,56,64,80,96,112,128,144,160,192 kbs

Channels:

1 - Mono

2 - Stereo

Sample rates:

11025, 22050, 44100 Hz

Then you should validate:

11025 can only be used with 8 to 64 inclusive

22050 can only be used with 8 to 160 inclusive

44100 can only be used with 32 upwards

Contents Colour scheme

The entire player color scheme is customizable. Use the Audio Player options panel in your WP admin to set the color scheme of your player. You can also change the colors per player instance by using runtime options. Here are the colors that you can set:

Audio Player

Contents Runtime options

Use these if you want to use a different color scheme for a particular player instance. You can also make the player open automatically or loop the loaded clip. You can pass a number of options to a player instance. To do this use the following syntax:

Path3
Option Effect
autostart=yes The player will automatically open and start to play the track (default value is no)
loop=yes The track will be looped indefinitely (default value is no)
bg=0xHHHHHH Background color option (where HHHHHH is a valid hexadecimal color value such as FFFFFF or 009933)
leftbg=0xHHHHHH Left background color
rightbg=0xHHHHHH Right background color
rightbghover=0xHHHHHH Right background color (hover)
lefticon=0xHHHHHH Left icon color
righticon=0xHHHHHH Right icon color
righticonhover=0xHHHHHH Right icon color (hover)
text=0xHHHHHH Text color
slider=0xHHHHHH Slider color
loader=0xHHHHHH Loader bar color
track=0xHHHHHH Progress track color
border=0xHHHHHH Progress track border color

Example:

Path4

This will set the main background color of the player to black and automatically start the player when the page loads.

Contents Installation

Extract and upload the files to your plugins folder

You should end up with this folder structure:

Audio Tree

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  1. Create a folder in your blog root (where your wordpress install lives) where you will store all your mp3 files
    I recommend an     audio folder in the root of your blog so it doesn’t interfere with your WP install. If you wish to use another folder, remember to change the audio files directory option on your options panel.
  2. Activate the plugin in your WP admin
  3. Go to Options > Audio Player in the WP admin
    Here, you can choose how you want to use Audio Player and also set the colours to match your site’s design.

Contents Upgrading from 0.x to 1.x

Once installed, the old player is overwritten with the new one and all color options should be transferred to the new scheme. Some adjusting to the slider and loader bar colors might be necessary.

Contents Upgrade wizard

Upgrade

Audio Player comes with an upgrade wizard. On the options panel, you can find out if a new update is available by clicking the Check for updates button. If an update is available, you will be prompted to open the upgrade wizard. Simply click Upgrade and the wizard will download the latest version and install it for you. Note: The upgrade wizard relies on some PHP functionality that is not available on all server configurations. You host may have disabled these features, in which case the upgrade wizard will be disabled.

Contents Source code

The latest source code is available for download on the Wordpress Pugins site. This includes the Flash source. Important: only download this code if you want to have a go at modifying the plugin or if you want to test the latest development version. The latest stable release is the one you can download on this website.

To crunch your files down use this little MP3 Tweak for windows. Download MP3 Tweak for Windows or Razor Lame. Tip never use variable bit rates for streaming Audio.

Tweak

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2. Streaming Video Player - Download - (151kb)Tired of copying and pasting the embed HTML from sites like YouTube into posts on your site? Well then this plugin is for you.Just simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box — easy as that. You can fully configure how the videos are displayed (width, height, alignment on the page) and much more. Best of all, it won’t break your page’s (X)HTML validation.

Currently supports these video sites:

As well as these file types:

Installing

Extract all files from the ZIP file, making sure to keep the file structure intact, and then upload it to `/wp-content/plugins/`.

This should result in the following file structure:

`- wp-content /- plugins/ - vipers-video-quicktags

Then just visit your admin area and activate the plugin.

To use the plugin

Simply go to one of the sites above and find the video you like and just enter the code.

Video

== Custom Video Resolutions ==

If you would like to override the width and height values specifed on the options page of this plugin on a video-by-video basis, you can do so via the BBCode. Just use this format to specify the width and height that you would like to use.

youtube.png

== Styling The Videos ==

All videos are wrapped in a `<div>` with the CSS class `vvqbox` as well as a class for the type of video it is (such as `vvqyoutube` or `vvqgooglevideo`).

If you’d like to add a border for example, try adding something like this to your theme’s stylesheet:

`.vvqbox {
border: 3px solid red;
padding: 5px;
}`

Example:

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2835309

3. Streaming Powerpoint Slides