Update 2013-02-17: Plug-in updated to support responsive design and retina, YouTube embed code on mobile updated!
If you like this plugin, please donate to support development and maintenance! Donate $10, $20 or $50!
Update 2013-02-06: Some bugs with Internet Explorer fixed and the plug-in automatically downloads the SWF Files, so no need for other version than the available from WordPress Directory.x
I really love the free software initiative, I love to share my time and my code, but sometimes it’s more than that.
I developed the Stream Video Player thanks to many friends who like the original player I coded on espractico.com and suggested to make it available as a WordPress plug-in, it take two weeks to be done and then I published the first version on July 7,2009, special thanks to @greyes
Most of the special work on the player is the Flash code and the marriage it has with the PHP streamer that make this pseudo-streaming possible, to make the code a plug-in for WordPress I had to learn how plug-ins on WordPress work and then develop something simple for the user.
I strongly believe that If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well, so I created a roadmap to deliver the best user experience possible, I added the “tag generator” that simplifies the creation of the short code tag for the plug-in, the possibility to select and re-edit a tag, the possibility to use the “tag generator” on “visual” or “HTML” mode, and many many features requested by the users.
Then by suggestion of the users who asked for many features I switched my SWF Video player for the JW SWF Video Player which has a lot of more features, but in order to do it right I had to fix some bugs the JW Player had because the pseudo-streaming wasn’t working at all, the aspect ratio flag on the .FLV video wasn’t recognized, so I downloaded the source from JW Player site and review the license they offer which on that time was a “Creative Commons, non-commercial, share alike” license, and make my own version of the player always keeping clear that it was a custom version of the JW Player and keeping the links on the “about” menu, I also had sent many bug reports to the JW Player developer team and they were very grateful about it on that time.
Then because many users didn’t have the tools and/or understanding of video encoding and pseudo-streaming I did a research and found the FFmpeg project (which is free-libre software). So I had the quest to make a single file compilation of the FFmpeg executable in a binary form I can share and I did this for Windows, Linux and Macintosh, it was a really hard work and I spent many hours and days talking on IRC with many people to find out how to compile FFmpeg the right way with all the possible codecs available keeping the final binary/program 100% free-libre software, it was really hard but some weeks later I had the binaries and then I created some video tutorials on how to use FFmpeg on Windows, Linux and Macintosh, again all this because I love to share and I love the free software initiative.
So for a time everything was cool and nice, until some greedy people changed the rules of doing things, first was the FFmpeg project, it appears that the FAAD/FAAC code was not free at all, magically the repository appeared with a license owner and the possibility of have an updated free distributable version of the FFmpeg binary was gone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAAC#Licensing
Then the WordPress plug-in repository had a change in the rules and they; without noticing the developers, suspended any plug-in that contained any file that was not licensed under GLP including SWF Files, so for that reason without any notification my plug-in was down, I had a really bad time trying to understand why this decision was made, all the code that I created and used to develop a plug-in for WordPress was 100% GLP, the SWF file is like and image, it is embedded inside the HTML and inside the plug-in but it is not part of it, but the decision was made and the only solution available to keep the plug-in available on WordPress directory was to load the SWF file from other site, something that I criticize a lot but something I can’t avoid.
Then because I use WordPress and because WordPress is open-source free-libre software I have been hacked, some hackers found how to hack any site using WordPress and they placed many spam and malware on my site and I never noticed until the worst happened, Google banned my site for having malware, I really, really had a bad time then, I received hundreds of complaints about the plug-in because any site that loaded content from my site appeared as a malware distributor site, and every site that used my plug-in loaded the player from my site.
I expend almost three weeks finding where the hackers leave the malware (because the code obfuscation), I had a really long fight with my hosting company who put all the blame on me (even if the infection come from other user on the same server) and after a month I was 100% certain my site was clean, It take some time to Google to notice my site was clean and to “unflag” my site as malware.
Then I realized that my plug-in was again down on the WordPress directory, guess why… it was because my plug-in appeared as malware on Google, so it take some time and many mails to the unknown and mysterious contact of the WordPress plug-in directory administrator’s (who are really hard to contact) to make the plug-in available again.
Then “Brian Rifkin” from the JW Player team sent me a letter which says:
Hello – I’m with Longtail Video, owner of the JW Player.
It appears as though you are illegally distributing our products. We are requesting that you cease and desist using our products including the JW Player and the JW Player Word press plugin immediately.
We do offer Enterprise licenses for this type of distribution. Please let me know if you are interested.
Please acknowledge receipt of this email upon receipt.
I replied that I was sure the license of the JW Player was “Creative Commons – non-commercial, share alike” and I was really sure I haven’t violated any of the rules on that license, but then I reviewed the JW Player source code online and I was surprised that the original license was changed and a new very strict license was placed instead, I complained that on the reply and added all the emails, conversations, code and contribution I did to the JW Player, so after a couple of days I received this email:
Rodrigo – My sincere apologies. I did not know that you had an ongoing relationship with our team. My colleague, who didn’t know about this either, flagged your site as violating our terms. Why don’t we go ahead and get you free license in our system so that we have a record of it.
Can you please send me the following and I’ll set it up for you, and once again sorry for the confusion.
So, long story short, they give me a license for the use of the JW Player.
So, now, after all this things that happened to me I only received $20 donation more than two years ago, from that time until now I didn’t make any cent from the use of the player, I hadn’t receive nothing from giving support (something I used to do very often), I only have the satisfaction of doing things right.
I live in Guatemala City, Central America, I work doing many things related to video production, publishing, advertisement, social media, and almost all the time I’m working on things like that, developing and providing solutions to my clients, doing many many things, I have a family I love and care and many other things to do and worth doing.
I’m not a beggar, I’m a professional who love his work and I make a life from it, I don’t like to ask people for donations, I actually feel bad doing it because as I said before, I’m not a beggar, I make and ask money from my work which I think is worth it, so for that reason, the Return On Investment in this project, I decided to momentarily and indefinitely stop the development and support of the project.
If someone really likes this project it can be forked to a newer version, it has my blessing!
I really thank all the people who contributed with me doing the translations, people who asked features and make this plug-in become one of the most used plug-ins for pseudo-streaming video online, thanks a lot to everyone.
P.D. The plug-in still work very well on the latest version of WordPress, if it is not working on your site it is something wrong with your site/configuration or video, please read the FAQ carefully or ask another user who have successfully installed the plug-in.
Always the same sh****
Hi Rodrigo sad to read that they made you so a hard time. Finally you Video Stream plug is unbeatable in the video sector. I get a licensed version of the jw player and made some little modification to add plugs and to be Facebook conform too. Hope you dont give up as a WP plugin dev. You are a real Five star Developer.
Thank you! I’ll fix and update the player in the near future because I know there is a little bug in recent versions of Internet Explorer, I hope no more than 2 months from now, but I cannot give support and meet the expectations of everyone, with my friends and developers of the JW Player for their licensing and with free software community, it is quite hard to find a midpoint between them.
Hallo Rodrigo
First thank you very much for working with that.
your plug is awesom but it didnt work 🙁
idk why , i just upload ur zip file, but nothing . i hopp u will fix fast as u can .
at last .do your plug need to buy something for work like JW player ? or it is free?
if it is free i will donate for u afte it work with my website .
Thank You for your hardly work
SCREEM KING
That’s why you should only offer a basic free version and keep pressing a paid full version.
Freeware and open source is for those developers that are very young and have the time. Not adults with responsibilities.
I learned long ago that very few people will donate anything. I have a video service that has had over 5,700,000 video downloads. Guess how many donations? 6!
I’ve been a developer for over twenty years and things were better back in the 90’s; everyone charged something for a service. Now developers are selling scripts for 2 and 3 dollars, WTF?
If I had any advice it would to never get involved in project that will not provide funds.
I don’t blame you Rodrigo, you should trash the code and charge for support.
Take care
Hola Rodrigo, quisiera agradecerte por el plug in y a la vez hacerte una pregunta.
¿Cómo puedo hacer para que los vídeos que yo enlace de youtube se puedan ver en hd por defecto?
Asi como hiciste tú en el ultimo video de esta página
http://rodrigopolo.com/about/wp-stream-video
Bueno muchas gracias de antemano.
Saludos
Hector Vasquez
Si es YouTube no se puede hasta donde he probado.
I would pay for an updated version of this plugin, it’s simply awesome!
Another vote for the paid version!
I was researching video “streaming” options for a web design customer, and had run into your WP plugin and website – hands down the best implementation I’ve seen. I’d have no problem purchasing a membership to your site or the plugin itself to ensure the further development.
Thank you also for creating a whole toolbox for Internet video on this website, in such a clear and easy way. I really hope you go forward with the paid option and not let all that hard and wonderful work go to waste.
So sorry your good intentions and all the hard work ended in such an enormous hassle. Please do feel free to email if you decide to offer a paid model – I’ll be back in a flash.
Seems it doesn’t work on WordPress 3.5. This plugin was AWESOME, and the only one that worked will with pseudo streaming. I would totally pay money to gave a supported version again. WordPress is an afterthought for JWPlayer.
In any event, thanks for all your work on this over the years.
Rodrigo, I’ve been using your plugin in its various configurations on several sites for quite a while now, and have always been happy with the way it worked on each one.
But whose really bad idea was it to force a plugin upgrade by replacing all the videos on a site that use that plug in with black boxes saying to please upgrade to version 1.3.7?
I just happened by the video page on one of the websites this afternoon, only to find that all of our videos – on a site that is all ABOUT video – were essentially BROKEN due to your update notification, with no idea how long the videos have been offline.
I went ahead and upgraded, and they appear to be back and functioning again, but given that we cannot have all the videos on our live site break every time there’s a plugin upgrade, and likely lose customers as a result, the powers-that-be have instructed me to replace your plugin with something else as soon as possible.
Worst possible way to notify a website about a plugin update EVER. 🙁
I have added warning all over the plug-in, on the readme.txt, on the plug-in’s about page, and everywhere, that because WordPress forbids the use of non GLP software on their directory (Flash SWF Files) I cannot include the player.swf on the plug-in it self, the first solution was to host the player.swf on my site AND WARN THE USERS TO NOT USE THE WORDPRESS VERSION BUT THE VERSION I HAD AVAILABLE ON MY SITE, sadly no one reads the readme.txt files and I expend more than 500GB of transfer bandwidth per month on my site just for the player.swf, so I decided to do something about it, I code a little pice of code that checks if the plug-in have installed the SWF files locally, if not, it downloads the player from my site just once, then I changed all my SWF files with the notification you read. (and fix some bug with internet explorer embed code)
So, my friend, the one here to blame is not me, it is you, first, read the readme.txt of each plug-in, there is always important stuff there, second, the warning message about upgrade it would appear only this time, it would’t appear if you hosted your own player.swf as I recommend on the readme.txt for more than a year, notice that, MORE THAN A YEAR! an third, I’m not receiving a cent for this marvelous piece of software, not a dime, nothing, this is free/libre free/of charge software, BUT I expend a lot of time and money on hosting and making it, could you be little grateful at least, and if you want to complain, send me a couple of $100 and complain all you want!
BTW looking at the referral sites that load the player.swf, most of them are about pr0n or religion, both make money and both are not 100% critical, so when I saw that I was expending 500GB of transfers to them, I decided to roll the update without regrests.
Please, next time, read the readme.txt, this is the last update I’ll do to the player, you know the history, read this post again.