JW Player Overview

Santiago Valle

Mar 14, 2014

What is JW Player?

JW Player is an open-source HTML5/Flash embeddable player for your website that supports a variety media formats. This means your video can be streamed on various devices, like desktop, tablets and smartphones.

JW Player provides a versatile way to host your own videos with great out-of-the-box features like analytics and support for HTML5.

JW Player comes with video controls, a volume slider a full screen feature, and skins that can be changed easily.

Cost

For non-commercial uses, it’s totally free. However, if you’ll be using it for commercial purposes, you will have to purchase a license that comes with additional features like analytics, skinning, branding, and sharing.

JW Player pricing can be found here JW Player Price

Features

Support for multiple devices and browsers
HTML5/Flash media rendering
Fully customizable
Playlists allowed for loading multiple media files
Live and adaptive streaming using RTMP protocol
Integration with popular CMSs (e.g. Wordpress)

Compatibility

JW Player is compatible with most popular browsers and devices as well as various delivery networks such as Amazon CloudFront, Akamai, CDNetworks, etc.

Support

JW Player 6 supports nine distinct media formats: three video file types (MP4, WebM, FLV), three audio file types (AAC, MP3, Vorbis), YouTube videos (through their Chromeless Player API), and two streaming protocols (HLS, RTMP).

Setting up JW Player

Create an account on http://www.jwplayer.com/
Download, unzip, and upload files to your webserver
Include JW Player script in your page <head>

<script type="text/javascript" src="jwplayer.js"></script>

Embed code into the <body> of your HTML page where you want your video to appear, like this:

<div id=“myElement”>Loading the player…</div>

<script type=“text/javascript”>
    jwplayer(“myElement”).setup({
        file: “/uploads/myVideo.mp4”,
        image: “/uploads/myPoster.jpg”
    });
</script>

[Image courtesy of John Loo via Flickr Creative Commons]