WordPress.org

Author: Pavel Soukenik

Embed video and audio on your website using shortcodes. The plugin enables HTML5 native playback for users with compatible browsers while offering an elegant degradation to other users through very lightweight Flash players. For HTML5 playback, it auto-detects and offers different alternatives, or degrades to Flash, and (failing even that) to download links.

Typical usage is simply [audio src="http://myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mysong"]

The plugin will make sure this does the following:

1. If the user has an HTML5 support for video and audio, it will play the media natively in an appropriate format.
2. Otherwise, if the user has Flash, it will play the media in lightweight Flash players.
3. Otherwise, there will be a link for the audio or video files so that the user can still play them using their installed software players.

The plugin also allows you to ignore "ogg" versions and force Firefox to fallback on Flash.

Refer to the Instructions section below on how to use the plugin.

Codecs and browsers: The current situation with HTML5 is not ideal. For video, you have to supply two formats to support all browsers. But if you do not mind forcing Firefox to fall back to Flash, you can provide H.264 version only. See the tables below showing the formats supported in the current browsers.

VIDEO           H.264   Ogg Theora
                .m4v      .ogg
Firefox 3.5      -         X
Safari 4.0       X         -
Chrome 3.0       X         X
Other (Flash)    X         -

When a browser supports multiple formats and the files are available, the preference goes from left to right (e.g. Chrome will prefer the H.264 format; reflecting the quality of the codecs).

AUDIO         WAVE   MPEG-4   Ogg Vorbis   MPEG
              .wav    .m4a       .ogg      .mp3
Firefox 3.5     X       -          X         -
Safari 4.0      X       X          -         X
Chrome 3.0      -       X          X         -
Other (Flash)   -       -          -         X

For audio, you have to include at least .mp3 and .ogg versions to cover all browsers. (Or, you can supply .mp3 and .m4a only which will force Firefox to play mp3 in Flash). Other formats are optional. Again, the preference for multiple available files in browsers supporting multiple codecs is left to right.

The Flash players used are a standalone version of WordPress Audio Player by Martin Laine, and Videoplayer by Mr.doob.

Plugin Homepage

Instructions

Currently, there is no settings panel. All you need is the syntax for the shortcodes explained below.

Audio

Basic syntax: [audio src="File URL/path"]

Advanced syntax: [audio src="File URL/path" options="special string" id="string"]

Example:

[audio src="http://myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mysong" options="autoplay loop controls" id="header-audio"]

• src is required. It must be an absolute or relative path to audio with the file name ("mysong", in the above example). The files need to be located somewhere in your content folder (usually 'wp-content') unless you specify the files using the format option. File extension can be omitted. Upload "mysong.mp3", "mysong.ogg" etc. as applicable to the specified location.
• options is optional. It is a space-separated list of attributes defining the player behavior: autoplay to start playback automatically; autobuffer to start preparing the playback, controls to display the built-in playback controls (otherwise you can build and hook up your own), and loop to start from the beginning when the end is reached. The default value is "controls autobuffer".
• id is optional. If you do not include one, the audio tag will have an automatically generated ID of html5audio-number. The IDs for the Flash players are prefixed with f-.
• format is optional. It is a space-separated list of available file formats. The default value is auto which autodetects the formats. You can specify a list of available formats manually instead (e.g. format="ogg mp3 wav").

Video

Basic syntax: [video src="File URL without extension"]

Advanced syntax: [video src="File URL without extension" width="pixel size" height="pixel size" options="string" id="string" only="H.264"]

Example:

[video src="http://myblog.com/videos/vidclip" poster="http://myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/clip-teaser.jpg" width="320" height="240" options="autoplay" id="vid-1"]

• src is required. It must be an absolute or relative path to video with the file name ("vidclip", in this example). The files need to be located somewhere in your content folder (usually 'wp-content') unless you specify the files using the format option. File extension can be omitted. Upload "vidclip.ogg" (in Ogg Theora format) and "vidclip.m4v" (in mp4 format) to the specified location.
• poster is optional. It is a URL to the image you want to display before the video loads/starts playback. (If a jpg with the same file name can be detected, it will be used when 'poster' is not specified.)
• width and height are optional. The default size is 480x320 (resolution of iPhone which does support embedded videos on pages).
• options is optional. It is a space-separated list of attributes defining the player behavior: autoplay to start playback automatically; autobuffer to start preparing the playback, controls to display the built-in playback controls (otherwise you can build and hook up your own), and loop to start from the beginning when the end is reached. The default value is "controls autobuffer".
• id is optional. If you do not include one, the video tag will have an automatically generated ID of html5video-number. The IDs for the Flash players are prefixed with f-.
• format is optional. It is a space-separated list of available file formats. The default value is auto which autodetects the formats. You can specify a list of available formats manually instead (e.g. format="ogg m4v").

If you find this plugin useful, you can rate it and link to the plugin. If you don't like it, feel free to leave feedback and comments on the webpage.