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New Video Player in Beta

5votes

Posted by: Shiv Kumar

Views: 1893Favorited: 0 Comments: 25

July 24, 2009 03:30 AM

Filed Under: New Feature

Tags: XR Video Player

We've released a new Video Player today. This player is in beta but should be ready to go live in a few days. We'll be supporting the older player for a few months still, since there are a lot of embeded videos out there and the embed code changes for this new player.

Once we release the new player, you'll see this player in use on XR and any embed code you get will use this new player.

Please take a look at the sample here Video Player Version 2.0

To discuss this new player as well as the new design of the site as a whole, please participate in the ongoing discussion here New Look For the Asset Display Page

We look forward to your feedback.

Thank you.

Comments

Germán Jiménez

July 24, 2009 01:13 PM

Se ve muy bueno e interesante que se le puedan quitar las lineas de los lados

Chris Maltese

July 24, 2009 07:05 PM

Typo on page

Change the option from "Toggel" to Toggle" Border.

July 24, 2009 07:27 PM

Thanks for the heads up Chris!

Other than the typo, do you have any feedback?

Travis Guerra

July 25, 2009 01:08 AM

Looks great. Cant wait.

Chris Maltese

July 25, 2009 10:18 AM

All else looks good to me, Shiv.

Roland Van Leeuwen

July 26, 2009 01:34 PM

Where are the buttons? I only the "Toggle" thing and I do not understand the purpose of it.

Shiv Kumar

July 26, 2009 01:59 PM

Refresh your Browser

Hi Roland, can you get to that page again and refresh your browser and try again?

Thanks.

theo rossi

July 26, 2009 08:43 PM

ya got it !

Looks cool :)

Roland Van Leeuwn

July 27, 2009 12:46 PM

I did not see the buttons because a had a zoom-factor of 75% activated.
Below 90% you cannot see the buttons

And I need a zoomfactor because the home page of exposureromm.com is too wide: I have to scroll horizontally.

Gordon

July 28, 2009 02:29 PM

Grrrr

Why can I not choose to begin seeking to the middle of any hosted video?!
This is really basic stuff. Sometimes I don't want to watch all of the overproduced video and just want the "money shot" to coin a phrase. I can do this just fine with any of the flash video sites out there so why not here? Other times the editor of video has done a poor job or no job at all and I need to skip thru the waffle that should have been edited out, but again I cannot do this!

Please enable this super basic functionality. Or at lease tell me how I can do this myself without having to download a 300MB video to my HDD and navigate the video using my own player of choice.

Shiv Kumar

July 28, 2009 02:51 PM

Progressive and Streaming

Gordon,

There are two types of video delivery. Streaming and Progressive. We (and I should say a lot of other sites) use Progressive. YouTube and a lot of other sites use Streaming. Each has their pros and cons.

Progressive video delivery has the limitation of requiring the portion of video to have been downloaded before you can seek to that point.

This is not the reason for us using Progressive, but my personal opinion is that ExposureRoom members have to learn to tell a story and be captivating out of the gate. So others to should let them know if they are not keeping their attention.

I'd like to know!

bubba gump

July 30, 2009 02:14 AM

nice, but still beta

I like the transparent button and features. unfortunately, I can't rewind the film even if I use the cursor to drag the film position to the left. Instead I have to refresh the entire webpage.

Shiv Kumar

July 30, 2009 02:22 AM

If you drag the time line marker all the way to the left it should work. The marker is that littel thing on the top that moves along with the time line.

That's the reason we removed the Stop/rewind button from the previous player.

I guess we could make it such that if you seek to a position less than a second then the player should start from the begining.

Eliman Vega

August 03, 2009 10:06 AM

It's all good, but these images were obviously taken with a very high-end camera so it's bound to look impressive. A more useful sample would be a side-by-side comparison of what the same clip would have looked like with the old player/codec, against what it looks and sounds like with the new player/codec.
Another possibility is to have this same clip compared to what it would look like on Vimeo and YouTube HD. I did this myself with a medium-quality clip, it was clear than Exposure room handles animations better, but skin tones are rendered inaccurately sometimes.

Karel Bata

August 08, 2009 05:44 AM

It's not a new codec, is it? Just a new embed window. Very nice.

I hope being able to switch the frame off will be an option.

Eliman, you can see all the major embedders side by side on my site http://kareltests.co.uk/ XR is the best. At time of writing this I haven't used the new embed code (will do later today Shiv ;) )

But you're right that the demo video is overly 'codec friendly' and doesn't show much movement.

Shiv, is the situation re scaling still the same? Like it's not allowed, but you can upload any size you want up to 360...?

BTW XR now have a Twitter page...

Shiv Kumar

August 08, 2009 05:56 AM

Karel,

It's only the player that has changed. That is th elook and feel of the player. We don't allow resizing at this time (still). Switching the frame off? The frame is not part of the video player. So when you embed you won't get a frame. The frame is purely html this time.

Eliman,
Just to be clear, the video quality has not been changed and so you still get the same Great XR quality.

The skin tone thing: Do you render on a MAC, if so, it's possible that you see a difference. But we don't touch your video's colors, staturation, levels, frame rate etc.

FYI: That video was taken with a Canon XHA1. Not sure I'd say it's a "high end" camera :). I'm sure the Canon 5D Mark II would look more impressive even though it's a cheaper camera.

Karel Bata

August 08, 2009 06:18 AM

Shiv,

You're in Virginia? 6am or so? You up early or late...?

Shiv Kumar

August 08, 2009 06:41 AM

I'm up late :)

Karel Bata

August 08, 2009 08:31 AM

I've done a test embed here here

This was a QT video at 320x240. I chose this size to test if XR would resize it. It doesn't. That's significant because it means that if users want to embed at non-standard sizes they just have to upload at the size they want. The alternative - resizing of an embed window often compromises performance, particularly on older machines.

Two observations here: it would be nice if the original user could opt to

1) NOT have text overlaid. On that page it looks a little cluttered,

2) to CHOOSE whether to have a frame on the thumbnail. At this page I chose Vimeo because there was no frame and I could thus make my own. I like the effect. If I could do that with XR, I would have chosen XR over Vimeo. Not having a frame also allows for other creative possibilities on a page.

Otherwise, brilliant!

Shiv Kumar

August 08, 2009 08:56 AM

Karel,

Thanks for all of your feedback.

The title and credited member feature will work (in the future) like this:

1. If the owning member is embeding their video on a "trusted" website, then they'll have the option to not have one or both (title and/or credited member's name) show.

2. If a video is being embed on a non-trusted website, then the player will ignore any request to hide the title and/or credit and show it like it does today.

As a result, we believe, this feature will satify your needs?
As regards the border around the thumbnails... I blieve, if you upload an image of your choosing, then the system will not draw a border around your image. Have you tred this?

Karel Bata

August 08, 2009 09:44 AM

All sounds excellent.

Re border - still there test

Shiv Kumar

August 08, 2009 10:43 AM

Karel,

The player does not have any border. It's the thumbnail image that has the border. When we generate the thumbnails, we draw a border on the image. It's that border that you see.

Karel Bata

August 08, 2009 10:49 AM

I know.
I said "2) to CHOOSE whether to have a frame on the thumbnail."
and you said "As regards the border around the thumbnails..."

So yes, the thumbnails. In the test (linked above) you can see the border in the thumbnail. Would be nice to be able to turn it off.

Shiv Kumar

August 08, 2009 10:53 AM

Yes, currently we still produce borders around thumbnails. Not sure we need to have an option. We'll simply stop puting a border around the thumbnails.

Karel Bata

August 08, 2009 11:01 AM

That gets my vote! :) People can always add one.

LATER: Just updated Video Embed comparisons I think you'll be pleased.

BUT I've got a bug for you. If you press play and move the mouse off the play area all you get is a black rectangle. You need some indication that it is buffering and hasn't just frozen up.