General

• I bought your Video Player! How do I download it? ...And how do I download the latest version?

  Log in to our site and then go to My Account. Once the initial payment is confirmed (which usually takes a few seconds), you can download the complete archive from there. You can download it as many times as you need and it will always be the latest version.

• I noticed you released a new update to your players. I am already using an older version and I want to update it on my site. How do I do that?

  Download the updated version from our site. To update your live version, you only need to replace the videoPlayer.swf and the settings.xml files you already have on your server, with the new ones you downloaded. If you made changes to the settings.xml file, you will have to make them again in the new settings file.

• I want to use the player in a multi-language site. Special characters of languages like Chinese, Arabian etc don't show up in the title/description/caption areas. What should I do?

  The standard version of the player does not come with special characters embedded (embedding all characters in all languages would generate a very big .swf file). To embed them yourself, open the source file videoPlayer.fla. Navigate on stage until you have the textbox in the title/description/caption selected. In the properties panel, click the embed button, select any font that supports the characters you need. Click "embed" and a big list of character sets will be displayed. Select the sets you need, save and recompile.

Setting Up

• I bought the player, everything works fine when I test it locally, but when I upload it on my server nothing shows up. What am I doing wrong?

  More often than not, the path to the settings.xml file specified in the embed code is different than the path you actually used for the settings file. To solve this problem, edit the path specified in the embed code (you can copy the default embed code from the file videoPlayer.html, which you get when you buy the product, and then paste it in your html).

• Although locally everything works fine, when I upload the player on my site, together with my videos, all kind of strange things happen:
  
  - files won't start playing if they take too long to load;
  - bits of audio from my files are heard when they are not supposed to;
  - play and pause buttons have a will of their own.

  Your metadata tag is at the end of the video instead of at the beginning, or your videos are not properly encoded. All videos must either be .flv files, or H.264 encoded. Video encoders can be found free around the web (here is an example).

• Although in some browsers the player looks as it is supposed to, in others - controls are overlapping. What should I do?

  Update your Adobe Flash Player to the latest version. This solves other issues as well. To download the latest version, please visit http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/.

• Why isn't the "share with a friend" feature working?

  You need to have php on your server with mail function working.

YouTube

• I want to be able to add a YouTube video to my playlist. How do I do this?

  In the settings.xml file, replace the video tag with one containing the path to a YouTube video. The video tag should look like this:
  
     <video>
        <ad start="30" path="path_to_your_ad" url="URL_that_will_open_when_user_clicks_on_the_ad"/>
        <videoPath value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIPGZs0UCQc" />   
     </video>

• Some of the YouTube videos in my playlist no longer show up. Not even the preview or the thumb image. What is happening?

  The real owner of the video complained to YouTube about a copyright infringement. There are several outcomes, each of which can render the video player unable to load that specific video:
  
  - YouTube completely removed the video.
  - If the complaining owner is one of the media companies that signed an agreement with YouTube, the video becomes available ONLY in certain countries. If you are not viewing from one of those countries, you will not be able to see the video. In the same way, our Video Player will not be able to load it.
  - YouTube disabled embedding. This means you can watch that specific video ONLY from YouTube. No external player is allowed to play it.
  

• When someone watches the YouTube video on the player, does YouTube count that as a "view"? Does it record it as a view?

  Yes, YouTube counts views even if they are made from external players.

• Can I remove the YouTube Logo when I play one of their videos?

  Removing the logo, changing the title or the video description constitutes a violation of YouTube's copyrights. This holds true even if it is one of your own videos that you uploaded on YouTube.

• Is your player YouTube TOC compliant?

  Yes. Consequently, it uses the YouTube API provided by them for playing YouTube videos.

• I have a fixed player size. Can I stretch videos from YouTube to match my width?

  No. For YouTube videos the player uses a YouTube API that they provide. The resize function is part of this API. YouTube does not let their videos to be stretched.

Video Type

• The player plays the 'Ratatouille.mov' that came with the file, but it does not play any of my .mov videos, only my .flv. What can I do?

  For playing any type of file other than .flv, the files need to be H.264 encoded. If your videos are not H.264 encoded, we suggest you re-encode them using QuickTime Pro, or one of the free encoders around the web (here is an example).

Options

• Can I edit the subject and the content of the message sent, when one of my visitors clicks on "send video to friend" button?

  Yes, you can use your own subject and content. Just open the settings.xml file, go to "swaf" and change the default subject and message content found there.

• Does the player support streaming and/or seeking?

  Yes, it supports both. For non-streaming videos, the seek feature is available only for the section of video that has already loaded.

• Why isn't Full Screen working?

  There are several possible reasons for that:
  
  - Please take note that the way Adobe's Flash Player is built, Full Screen only works in browser.
  - You need to have the parameter "allowFullScreen" set to true in the code you use to embed the swf in your html; please have a look at videoPlayer.html to see how to set this parameter using swfObject. The Full Screen option is enabled by default if you use the embed code we provide.
  - You must have version 9,0,28,0 or later of Adobe's Flash Player installed to use full screen mode.

Embedding

• How can I embed the player multiple times on the same html page?

  Since each player instance must have its own settings.xml file, when you try to embed multiple players, they won't know how to each load its specific settings.xml file. To solve this problem, take a look in the embed code, inside the videoplayer.html file.
  You will notice that you can set the path for the settings file there:
  
  1. Create one such "settings" file for each player you want to embed and name them "settings.xml", "settings1.xml", "settings2.xml" and so on until each player has its unique settings file.
  2. Rewrite the path to the settings file in the embed code of each player, so their paths refer to the corresponding settings file.

• How can I integrate the player into my full AS2 Flash site?

  There are several ways to embed a swf into another one. Here is one such way detailed:
  
  1. Open your site's main fla. Create an empty movieclip named "mc1" on a separated layer on your main fla.
  2. Give it an instance name using the properties bar below (name it "mc1" as well).
  3. Add the following code on the same frame where you put the empty movie clip:
  stop();
  mc1.loadMovie("videoPlayer.swf?settingsFile=settings.xml");
  4. Copy the entire content of the deploy folder you received when you bought the player and paste it in the same directory where your site's main fla is.
  5. Compile your site.
  
  Note: don't worry if it seems it does not load the xml when you compile. It can only load it when in browser.

• How can I integrate the player into my full AS3 Flash site?

  Note that you need the AS3 version of our player if you want to embed it into an AS3 flash site. There are several ways to embed a swf into another one. Here is one such way detailed:
  
  1. Open your site's main fla. Create an empty movie clip named "mc1" on a separated layer on your main fla.
  2. Give it an instance name using the properties bar below (name it "mc1" as well).
  3. Add the following code on the same frame where you put the empty movie clip:
  
  import flash.display.*;
  import flash.net.URLRequest;
  
  stop();
  var loader:Loader = new Loader();
  var url:String = ""videoPlayer.swf?settingsFile=settings.xml";
  var urlReq:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
  loader.load(urlReq);
  mc1.addChild(loader);
  
  4. Copy the entire content of the deploy folder you received when you bought the player and paste it in the same directory where your site's main fla is.
  5. Compile your site.
  
  Note: don't worry if it seems it does not load the xml when you compile. It can only take it when in browser.

• I use load and unload functions for integrating the player into my site. However, I can still hear the sound of the previously playing media after I unload the videoPlayer, or even after I navigate away from the page. How can I unload the movie clip so that the sound is unloaded as well?

  Before you unload the player movie clip, you need to also call the player's own unload function (basically, you first need to unload what the player loaded. Only afterwards you unload the player itself).
  Here is the code you should use for unloading the player ("mc1" is the movie clip inside of which you originally loaded the player, as stated in the previous answer in this FAQ):
  
  AS2 code:
  mc1.mcVideoPlayer.unload();
  mc1.unloadMovie();
  
  AS3 code:
  mc1.mcVideoPlayer.unload();
  loader.unload();
  mc1.removeChild(loader);