Earlier this year I posted about flash players worth checking out for including streaming media on your website. On of the players I mentioned was the JW FLV Media Player which I happen to use extensively myself. In the interim months since that post there have been several updates to the JW player that are worth noting, especially for those who publish video on the net and want a flexible, configurable video player that can also reflect the brand of a show.

Support For H.264 Video

This is a big deal because it means the player now supports streaming iPod and iPhone compatible videos that have the .M4V file extension. So video podcasters can use the player to link directly to their source file and deliver the same video quality via the web that they do when the file is downloaded.

Support For YouTube Videos

The player can now play YouTube videos and also playlists using the YouTube API.

Support For WMV Video and WMA Audio

The JW WMV Media Player is a separate player that leverages Silverlight technology from Microsoft. I know that WMV is rarely the format of choice for online video publishing but there may be some situations where the Windows format is necessary. In that case check the WMV version of the player out.

Plugins and Themes

This is a big deal. Jeroen's company LongTail Video has created an AddOn gallery that contains a variety of player themes and add-on functionality. I haven't done anything with the themes (or skins) yet but I have checked out some of the plugins and they are very useful including Viral, Rate It, Tip Jar and Google Analytics.

Some of the features enabled by the plugins (like Viral) are available if you use a third party video hosting service like YouTube or Blip.tv but some (like Tip Jar) aren't. And the JW player has the added benefit of being a non-branded "white label" solution. In fact the JW Player makes it pretty easy to stamp your own brand on the player including adding logos and changing the player colors. See the JW Configuration Wizard for some examples.

Since anyone can build add-ons for the player I think it's very likely that we'll see the list of choices expand, making the JW FLV Media Player and even more valuable resource to web video producers as time goes on.

CMS Integration

In addition to the plugins and themes LongTail Video is offering up a list of "modules" that provide integration with various Content Management Systems including Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla. These modules are worth checking out if you plan to build a white label video site on one of these platforms.

Player Example

To give you an idea of how the player looks if you don't know already I've embedded one of my videos from another site. This particular player is using H.264 streaming, the Viral plugin along with a custom background image. You'll also notice that I've taken advantage of a flash variable that adds a link icon on the player that links back to the original video site.