Flash player 7 or better is required to view this content.

I’ve never gotten around to releasing the Flash player plugin I wrote a couple of months ago. It’s basically a small player written in Flash that I’ve been working on for some time now wrapped in a Flash plugin. It allows you to use simple tags to embed FLV, SWF (click here for limitations) and MP3 files into WordPress posts.

The output is valid xhtml and works on all current browsers. The actual player, a tiny flash movie, is only 3 KB in size. It’s designed to work well on pages with a white background, where it integrates seamlessly.

Download the this.player plugin for WordPress.

Installation

  • Download the zip file and unpack the files inside.
  • Upload the thisplayer folder to the wp-content/plugins folder on your server.
  • Activate the plugin on WordPress’s ‘plugins’ tab.

To embed a movie or audioclip using the plugin, follow these steps:

  • Upload the file you want to display to your wp-content/uploads folder.
  • Use [xxx]filename[/xxx] to embed it anywhere in your post. replace the ‘xxx’ bit with either ‘flv‘, ‘swf‘ or ‘mp3‘ depending on the type of file you’re embedding.
  • Save and publish the post.
  • If you uploaded your media file to a subfolder of uploads, use [xxx]foldername/filename[/xxx].

To change the display resolution or enable autostart:

  • Open thisplayer/thisplayer.php in a text editor (I use Notepad++)
  • The $players array holds the player presets. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Edit the widths and heights to suit your needs.
  • Replace these numbers with your preferred display dimensions. The control bar underneath the video is 20 pixels high, so if you’re planning to use 320*240 pixel video’s set the player dimensions to 320*260.
  • Save and (re)upload the file.
Share and Enjoy:
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Filed under: English, WordPress plugins | Tags: , , , , , | Roy | August 30, 2007

35 Comments

  1. [...] this.player is a a small player written in Flash that allows you to use simple tags to embed FLV, SWF and MP3 files into WordPress posts. (No Ratings Yet)  Loading … Sphere: Related Content [...]

    Pingback by Weblog Tools Collection » Blog Archive » WordPress Plugin Releases for 8/31 — August 31, 2007 @ 5:38 am

  2. awesome job!
    im glad there’s no .js files required to be placed in the header for this to work. Lets see how it works!

    Comment by sk — August 31, 2007 @ 6:47 am

  3. [...] this.player is a a small player written in Flash that allows you to use simple tags to embed FLV, SWF and MP3 files into WordPress posts. [...]

    Pingback by Nico Nemil | Filipino Web Developer | Pinoy Web Designer | Intermediate Graphics Artist » WordPress Plugin Releases for 8/31 — August 31, 2007 @ 7:14 am

  4. [...] WordPress plugin: this.player — It’s basically a small player written in Flash that I’ve been working on for some time now wrapped in a Flash plugin. It allows you to use simple tags to embed FLV, SWF and MP3 files into WordPress posts. Tagged as: [wordpress flash flv swf mp3 player plugin] [...]

    Pingback by Niklas’ blog » Blog Archive » My Del.icio.us bookmarks created during the past week — August 31, 2007 @ 8:01 am

  5. Good work but I have a problem with the audio player version. I have to click stop before play to have it work. This happens only for the first time the player is loaded, i.e. refresh the page to see the behaviour again.

    Comment by JP Renaud — August 31, 2007 @ 12:27 pm

  6. Roy:

    Great plugin. I have tried a whole bunch of ‘em, this is the one that works the best and does not mess with the quality of my swf file. Thanks.

    If you are taking future requests (!!) then I would love to request a minor feature: addition of time of the video (time left or total time or how much time has passed). This will be great for long videos so people can remember where they left off.

    Thanks again.

    -Avinash.
    PS: Here is a link to the post where I am using your plugin (the player was blending into the white background so I just put it into a table with a cell color):

    http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge.html

    Comment by Avinash Kaushik — September 1, 2007 @ 8:52 am

  7. [...] Roy Tanck’s weblog » WordPress plugin: this.player embed flv, swf and mp3s (tags: wordpress plugin mp3) Posted in Uncategorized | [...]

    Pingback by links for 2007-09-01 « Hip Hop News — September 1, 2007 @ 5:41 pm

  8. Hi great plugin and what i looking for, thanks!
    Can be possible to place tracks in other folders than “uploads” ?
    For example i have my own tracks in http://www.mydomain.it/music/tracks

    Simone

    Comment by Simone — September 2, 2007 @ 11:36 am

  9. @Simone, currently, you can’t. If you know your way around PHP you can edit the plugin to use a different location. I chose to use WP’s default which is very convenient for the majority of users.

    Comment by Roy — September 2, 2007 @ 3:27 pm

  10. Simone & Roy, I have personally changed the php so that the address you put in the post is the full address (i.e. with the http:// etc…). That way, you can use an audi or video file stored outside of your website. very convenient. JP

    Comment by JP Renaud — September 2, 2007 @ 6:05 pm

  11. I have Wordpress installed in subdirectory wordpress. If I use the player as is I get a Stream not Found. If I add /wordpress to the php fie I don’t get the message but nothing happens. I have uploaded both a flash and mp3 file.

    Comment by Bill — September 3, 2007 @ 4:27 pm

  12. I figured it out. Wordpress 2.2 puts the files in a subfolder 2007/09 not directly in /uploads. I moved the files to /upload and it works.

    Comment by Bill — September 3, 2007 @ 4:31 pm

  13. @Bill: That is correct. You either need to prepend the right folders, disable the ‘Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders’ setting under Options > Miscellaneous or upload manually (FTP).

    Comment by Roy — September 3, 2007 @ 8:02 pm

  14. Your player does resize the swf file display to your parameters specifying the window size. It doesn’t however resize the swf frame itself, so it ends up showing only a portion. For example, my swf file is designed for 800×600 display and I am showing in your player as 480×360, but it is only showing the upper 480×360 portion of the 800×600 stage without compressing it. As I recall there are two places that these parameters must be transferred to the flash player.

    Comment by joe — September 5, 2007 @ 6:22 pm

  15. Is there anyway that you can host the file anywhere except your Wordpress hosting? and then transfer it somehow?

    Comment by the king — September 7, 2007 @ 4:03 am

  16. @the king: I’m not entirely sure what you mean by ‘transferring’ the files, but if you check earlier comments, JP Renoud has modified the plugin to allow it to be fed full paths. That modification might work for you as well.

    Comment by Roy — September 7, 2007 @ 7:51 am

  17. Hi, this looks like a great plugin. I just installed it, the player shows up fine, but I am not getting any audio. The mp3 file is in the upload folder. I also tried pushing stop then play (as pointed out above). Any suggestions?

    Ben

    Comment by Ben — September 10, 2007 @ 6:56 am

  18. @Ben: are you sure the mp3 file isn’t in a 2007/09 (or similar) folder within ‘uploads’? That would require something like [mp3]2007/09/file.mp3[/mp3] .

    Comment by Roy — September 10, 2007 @ 7:30 am

  19. Hi Roy, just double checked to make sure and it’s in the upload folder. It’s strange, because the player turns up just fine. I just can’t get any sound.

    Comment by Ben — September 10, 2007 @ 2:33 pm

  20. Thanks for the great plugin. It solved a problem I was having when I set up my wife’s blog. I figured I should let you know of a change I made to my copy to add some features. Here are the details ( http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19049787- ) but basically, I made the script support a [flv]filename.flv|320|480[/flv] format. It could still be used in a simple form (e.g. [flv]filename.flv[/flv] ) and would use the script-specified figures as default width/heights. However, you could also use it to easily play videos with sizes different from the default.

    Comment by Jason Levine — September 25, 2007 @ 7:47 pm

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    Pingback by Jody Sachse - Wandering the Webernet — October 10, 2007 @ 3:02 am

  22. [...] this.player Replaces specific codes in the post with a Flash based media player. Supports FLV video, SWF movies and MP3 audio. [...]

    Pingback by Must Have WordPress Plugins - Money Making Scoop — October 13, 2007 @ 3:30 am

  23. [...] Visit [...]

    Pingback by WordPress Plugins Database » Plugin Details » this.player — October 16, 2007 @ 11:23 am

  24. [...] couple of people have emailed me questions about playing SWF files using the this.player plugin I released last week. There are some limitations to this, which I forgot to mention in my [...]

    Pingback by Embedding SWF files using the this.player plugin at GraveYardITGuy — October 16, 2007 @ 3:56 pm

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    Pingback by Adding Movies and Mp3 Files To Wordpress | Coffee With Allan Cockerill… — December 16, 2007 @ 6:26 am

  27. [...] , I install new plugin into my blog that is this.player which it can help me to play file my media such as .mp3, .swf, [...]

    Pingback by STORY of AODDY. » Test WordPress plugin: this.player — January 20, 2008 @ 9:24 am

  28. thank you for your player work very nice.

    Comment by djericdesign — March 4, 2008 @ 6:32 am

  29. First off thanks for the plugin, very easy setup but Im having a weird prob which you can see in the link below. Basically I downloaded the flv of a youtube video and embeded both the youtube video and the flv video using your player. On yours though the aspect ratio is wrong. The video is stretched vertically….
    http://blog.brimur.com/?p=317

    Comment by brimur — March 20, 2008 @ 7:55 pm

  30. Hi Brimur. The dimensions for any FLV video are stored in it’s meta data. My plugin read that and adjusts the display accordingly. Unfortunately, some encoders insert faulty numbers. Even a professional program I worked with mixed up the horizontal and vertical sizes. This is the most probable cause of the problem you’re experiencing.

    There are programs available that let you adjust these figures. Could you check if the meta data says the file is something like 320×240 and report back? You can use a tool like this: http://www.buraks.com/flvmdv/

    Comment by Roy — March 20, 2008 @ 8:50 pm

  31. Thanks for replying Roy. I checked in VLC and I installed the DLL you suggested and both say the FLV file is 320 x 240 pixels. I edited the php script in your plugin to set FLV dimensions to 425 x 375 (same size as youtube video) and also to 320 x 260 as you suggest but it still looks vertically stretched. The FLV itself is available here if you want to have a look yourself http://blog.brimur.com/wp-content/uploads/UtahSaints08.flv

    Comment by brimur — March 21, 2008 @ 11:39 am

  32. QBrimur: Thnks, I downloaded the file and will look into it. On first glance it looks like the meta data in the file is OK, so it must be my fault somehow :)

    Comment by Roy — March 21, 2008 @ 2:20 pm

  33. For some reason, my videos continue to loop non-stop. Does anyone know how to stop this? (I am using SWF files)

    Thanks

    Comment by Pagecrew — June 2, 2008 @ 3:03 am

  34. Hi Pagecrew. Did you create the swf yourself? Is it possible there’s a script in there that forces the movie to loop? Some video encoders (like Squeeze) offer this as an option when encoding swf videos.

    Comment by Roy — June 2, 2008 @ 7:25 am

  35. Is there a way to make it so that the file data does not start loading/buffering by default? I have a page on my site that serves as an index of multiple sound files, and each time the page is called, every single sound file starts loading. If I can accomplish this by editing the PHP file, I’m willing to do so.

    http://joylag.com/afi

    Comment by Shawn C — July 2, 2008 @ 1:15 pm

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