JW Player Overview
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>
- 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>
A basic example ca be found here: https://support.jwplayer.com/articles/how-to-embed-a-jwplayer[Image courtesy of John Loo via Flickr Creative Commons]
