FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

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FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby MG - Admin » Wed Dec 16, 2009 8:02 am

Hey everyone!

I'm a little late in joining the party, but the template I've been using for my photo web site was updated early this year and I finally got around to updating last night. There are quite a few new features, but the best one that I found was the ability to embed YouTube HD videos into the galleries. The nice thing about the embedding feature is that there are no YouTube logos or any other indication that you're watching a video from YouTube. The image quality is very nice and the shows don't take more than a few seconds to buffer and begin playing. I suppose that depends on your internet connection, but it seems like it's working great.

If anyone is interested, the free software for creating the albums is JAlbum and the skin template is FotoPlayer. There is a lite version and a pro version depending on which features you would like to use. Each has a trial version of the skin which includes all of the different features without restriction and there is no time limit for their use. Paying for the license removes the "Trial Version" logo.

Take a look here to see how the videos work within the photo gallery: Slide Shows

For those of you with a business or simply want an easy way to share your shows on your own sites and provide high quality samples this might be a nice solution. With some tinkering you could use the software to display your shows on your web pages without all the extra stuff as well.

Happy Holidays!

Mike

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Re: FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby debngar » Wed Dec 16, 2009 9:41 am

Wow Mike, that's pretty neat. These are coming from YouTube? It's nice the logo isn't there. Your shows don't automatically go to YouTube on double-clicking on the viewing screen. I checked out the Monterey show and it momentarily hung up about a quarter of the way through but it did finally continue.

Three things I'd love to see included with that player:

1. The loading indicator on the controls is barely viewable to see if I needed to let it load further before playing through for smooth playback. If it were a different color contrasting to the area it's displayed that would be good.

2. Something that displays the show time/length and where the scrubber bar is during playback.

3. The ability to view the show full screen. There's an icon on your site in the lower left corner that says "view full screen" but the slide show stays the same size.

Nice find Mike.
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Re: FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby MG - Admin » Wed Dec 16, 2009 6:56 pm

Debbie:

The three items you mentioned are all feature requests that have been submitted to the creator of the template for implementation. He's mentioned that he'll be adding a buffer indicator for the YouTube videos in the next version. He also addressed the issue about going full screen with the videos. Apparently it's a problem with using Flash as the player and being able to integrate the full screen option within the template. Not sure if there's a workaround for that. As for the size or readability of the controls I agree that it would be nice to have the timeline be a little larger, or colored differently, so you can see how much of the video file has preloaded.

Those points aside I'm fairly happy with the integration of the YouTube videos into the galleries. It's doubly nice that the YouTube logos are non-existent.

Mike

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Re: FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby bellzerr » Thu Dec 17, 2009 5:22 am

After clicking the thumbnail in the lower left, nothing comes up for me no matter how long I wait. Could this be why this topic has 110 views and only 2 (now 3) replies?
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Re: FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby texan » Thu Dec 17, 2009 8:35 am

Great Post Mike: (This appears to eliminate the need for the presenter ?????) A bug head ache for many folks.

Does one upload a show to You Tube.....or to JAlbum??

How about walking us through the process of creating (Format) a show, and then getting it to play on Jalbum?

What about sound and duration limits of You Tube; are they in play also?

What a great find if this really works like I hope it will??

Cheers
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Re: FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby debngar » Thu Dec 17, 2009 8:55 am

mgregg99 wrote:Debbie:

The three items you mentioned are all feature requests that have been submitted to the creator of the template for implementation. He's mentioned that he'll be adding a buffer indicator for the YouTube videos in the next version. He also addressed the issue about going full screen with the videos. Apparently it's a problem with using Flash as the player and being able to integrate the full screen option within the template. Not sure if there's a workaround for that. As for the size or readability of the controls I agree that it would be nice to have the timeline be a little larger, or colored differently, so you can see how much of the video file has preloaded.

Those points aside I'm fairly happy with the integration of the YouTube videos into the galleries. It's doubly nice that the YouTube logos are non-existent.

Mike


Mike,

It almost sounds like this player takes the video and turns it into a flash show which is why there is no way to currently play it full screen and also why there is no YouTube logo. Do you know if there really is a connection there or whether it is entirely disconnected from YouTube in that case? If it's disconnected and is just a flash show (which is what it seems) then we can already do that with Producer by creating a flash show to put on our websites as I've done with a few of my own shows. There is no way currently to play the flash version full screen of course which is why I was wondering if the player you featured actually is connected to YouTube in this case. Do you know if the hits on YouTube are affected as well? If not then I would wonder if it's truly an embedded show.

Also would be nice to see larger thumbnails to choose from on your site else it's hard to know what a person is selecting to watch. I kind of knew from viewing them in the past but for someone seeing your site for the first time, they would not be able to tell one from another as to content.
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Re: FotoPlayer w/ JAlbum

Postby MG - Admin » Thu Dec 17, 2009 10:17 am

debngar wrote:It almost sounds like this player takes the video and turns it into a flash show which is why there is no way to currently play it full screen and also why there is no YouTube logo. Do you know if there really is a connection there or whether it is entirely disconnected from YouTube in that case?


Yes, the shows are playing directly from YouTube. When you click on the thumbnail and the show begins to load you'll notice that the info bar on the bottom of your browser is connecting to YouTube. When the shows are set up to play in FotoPlayer you simply point to the YouTube address where the show resides. I know there is a PHP file that's part of the template that is designed to handle the video files and I'm sure the magic is in there that removes the typical YouTube logos and functions such as double clicking on the video to be taken to the YouTube site. I don't know how it all works, but I know it does. The only thing I can control is what show I point to and what size I want it to play at.

debngar wrote:Also would be nice to see larger thumbnails to choose from on your site else it's hard to know what a person is selecting to watch.


In order to maximize viewing space for the photos and videos the thumbnails need to be the size they are. I design my site to work for people with 1024 x 768 resolutions and if I make the thumbs much larger I have to make everything else smaller. It's a compromise, but one that seems to work for me.

Texan wrote:Does one upload a show to You Tube.....or to JAlbum?? How about walking us through the process of creating (Format) a show, and then getting it to play on Jalbum? What about sound and duration limits of You Tube; are they in play also?


YouTube limits are still in play. No shows over 10:59, and copyrighted music is still subject to being removed. To play the shows using the FotoPlayer template you simply have to upload the show to YouTube as you normally would and then add the URL of the show in the appropriate area when creating your album in JAlbum. It's a very simple process.

bellzerr wrote:After clicking the thumbnail in the lower left, nothing comes up for me no matter how long I wait


It's possible that your internet connection might not be sufficient to load these shows quickly. I can only guess that this may be the cause since I've had no issues with them playing. If and when the developer adds a status indicator while the show is loading you'll know if it's just a matter of buffering or something else. This is the only real downside to this process currently. HD shows require pretty fast connections and a pretty sturdy PC, and with the lack of a status bar right now it's kind of a mystery as to what's happening for those that might not see anything playing.

Mike

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