Comments on: Embedded FLV video players: Flowplayer and JW Player

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:42:30 +0000

It has been 3 years since the original fine review. My experience has been like that of @Kisalay, although I am not convinced that JWPlayer “works out of the box.” I have no data on that, however, Flowplayer failures seem to arise from inconsistencies in Flash and browser HTML5 implementation. Asynchronous events create inconstant failures for which there appears to be no reliable access to the significant threads. Trying to solve that by setting javaScript timers to assess state is like herding cats. Beware of W3C optimism about pre-2014 HTML5 adoption and transition possibilities. Beware of bidding a fixed-price project with video.

By: Kisalay

Kisalay — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:15:50 +0000

Well, I couldn’t agree more. Flowplayer blows you away with looks, but not everything works out of the box. Bugs haven’t been fixed for months, and they don’t do enough testing with all the browsers out there. JWPlayer definitely seems to be much more mature product, but doesn’t offer as many features and pluggable extensions as Flowplayer. The silver lining with JWPlayer is it works out of the box and as expected.
Right now I am racking my brains to fix bugs by myself in Flowplayer, but am definitely considering options.

By: David Dunford

David Dunford — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:19:59 +0000

Great review of the video players. Have recently hosted a number of videos on AmazonS3 and been doing some research regarding video players and appreciate your comments.

Keet the great reviews coming.

David.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:27:53 +0000

BitGravity offers a one-click set-up free Flash player. Check it out at http://player.bitgravity.com

By: George

George — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:48:18 +0000

You may also want to look at the Dash player as well.
From TMT Didgital
http://www.tmtdigital.com/

By: KP

KP — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:18:06 +0000

Good review of the player options. It’s quite amazing that these are the only two major embeddable players out there. Adobe just announce they will release an open player initiative to be launched in Q3 of 09, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

My take on the player is similar to yours. For the time being, JW is just the better platform. It’s easier to skin, fairly reliable, and mature. The API’s are well documented and easy to follow. The plugins on the other hand are a joke. Most of them don’t work right – like the Google Statistics integration which leaves you wondering just what the heck it is tracking. The Viral component is pretty much useless, and unless you want to drop major coin you may as well forget about the ad plugin as well. Skinning is pretty easy if you know your way around Flash.

FlowPlayer is new to the scene and their website has a wealth of well structured information. They make heavy use of external libraries like JQuery. The result is a documentation that is comprised of a bunch of JavaScript/JQuery tutorials. I find the skinning options insufficient at this point plus I rarely find good examples of sites using the player. As of recent they added media rss support so I guess I’ll take another look.