- Added XML Playlist support!
- Added ability to link to ANY video in the Drupal system, and create a playlist with ANY number of videos!
- Added the ability to have a intro video!!!
- Added PostgreSQL support!
- Added the ability to include a logo (watermark) in the bottom right corner, along with external links!
Excited yet!? Let me show you how to use all these new wonderful features.
1.) The flashvideo_playlist.php file and some Database changes.
The first thing that you will need to do when you download this new version is to run the database update script. I made a significant amount of changes to the database structure to be more like the "Drupal way". After you have done this, you will then need to copy the flashvideo_playlist.php file to your root Drupal directory (where index.php resides). You need this file as an interface between the Flash Player and the Drupal file system. Basically this is where I send an XML playlist structure to the Flash Player to allow you to have any number of video's play! To learn more on how I do this, I go into great detail in my tutorial Interfacing Flash with Drupal. You have to manually copy this file, because Drupal wouldn't let me do it automatically for you since it is in the root path.
2.) The ![video] tag additions.
So here is how you take advantage of the changes... Basically there are two new parameters for the ![video] tag. They are as follows...
Please note: As of version 1.8, you no longer need to specify "all" if you wish to include all nodes. Simply omitting "node=all" and including the fids parameter is now enough to get those video files.
- node - This tag specifies the node in which you are referencing. If you don't want to direct it to another node, then just omit this tag. You can specify all nodes by saying node=all
- fids - This is a list of File ID's separated by a "-". This is how you can specify many different files to add to the playlist. You can specify all files by saying fids=all.
Here are some examples to help you out...
- ![video:node=all:fids=100-150] - Will play video file 100 followed by 150. Node doesn't matter
- ![video:node=2:fids=34-35-23] - Will play files 34, 35, and 23 filtered by node 2. If any of those files are not in node 2, then they won't play
- ![video] - Nothing changes... works just like the old way. Plays the first video in the current node. The same goes if you specify the index
- ![video:node=all:fids=all] - Will play all Flash Video files in your whole Drupal site!
3.) The FlashVideo Settings additions.
There are some more settings that I would also like for you to be aware of. The first one that you will notice is that there is now a drop-down FlashPlayer Settings section. This will basically allow you to take advantage of some features in the Flash Player. Probably the COOLEST is the ability to now have an intro video! This is really what I added the playlist capability for, but then just went crazy after realizing how freakin awesome it was to have playlist capability. All you have to do is specify your intro video in that box and you are done. You just need to make sure it is in your output directory. Also, another really cool thing that I added was the ability to have your logo show up in the bottom right hand side of the video. Just give it an image and you are done! Now the other two (Image Intro, and Image Time) frustrated me.... According to the Flash Players website, it says that I can specify an image here and it will show up like an intro. However, I have not been able to get this to work the way it says. I still included it in hopes that Joroen Wijering will come out with an update.
Well, there was just a small intro to some of the many enhancements in version 1.7. I hoped this little intro to version 1.7 helped out!
Enjoy!
