JW Player: Flash Video Player

What's New in JW Player™ 5.2

JW Player 5.2 incorporates two major updates: a skinning model upgrade and improved dynamic streaming. Other new features include:

• Font Control — You can now create skins with full control over the color, size and face of all fonts in the controlbar and playlist.
• Controlbar Layout — You now have the ability to specify the order of and/or hide individual buttons, sliders and text in the controlbar.
• Buffer Animation — You now have more control over the buffer icon animation, with the ability to change the speed and direction of the rotation.

In JW Player 5.2, we have also improved the logic used by the dynamic streaming feature of the player. It now responds more quickly to dramatic drops in bandwidth, making it much less likely to buffer and therefore providinga more fluid playback experience for users.

Features in JW Player 5

JW Player 5 introduces a number of architectural changes that broaden the ability to develop on and contribute to the platform.

• Bitrate Switching - allows you to configure the player to dynamically adjust video quality based on the performance of your user's internet connection.
• Bandwidth Detection - sample and determine the bandwidth your user is experiencing.
• XML-based skinning model - No need for Flash CS4 to build skins. If you can create an XML file and images, then you can create a skin.
• Improved Plugin Architecture - The player now allows for a broader set of use cases such as securing content, player locking, advertising, and more.
• MXMLC Compilation - JW5 compiles out of the box with MXMLC. Again, no need for Flash CS4. Download our distribution and MXMLC, and you'll be able to compile the player in minutes.
• Streamlined Event Model - For those digging into the guts of the player, you'll notice a more consistent event model which simplifies making modifications to the player.
• Support for Media Providers — As always the JW Player supports the major CDNS, but with JW5 it's easy to build in support for any content source and dynamically load a SWF to add that functionality to the player (just like plugins do).

In addition to the above features, JW Player™ 5 is backward-compatible with the majority of JW4 SWF Skins, JW4 Plugins, & the JW4 JavaScript API. Note: This support will be phased out in future versons of JW Player™ 5.

JW Player™ Overview

The JW Player™ is the Internet's most popular and flexible media player. It supports playback of any format the Adobe Flash Player can handle (FLV, H.264, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports various streaming and playlist formats (including RMTP, HTTP, live streaming and more), a wide range of flashvar settings and an extensive JavaScript API.

The XML-based skinning functionality allows you to completely customize its look and its plugin architecture allows you to easily extend the player with features such as sharing, recommendations, searching, analytics and ad serving.

More Product Details

For more information on the JW Player 5.2 for Flash, visit the Product Details Section.