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Using JW Player Plugins

This guide explains how to use plugins in the JW Player. If you're looking for information on how to build plugins, see our guides on Building Flash Plugins and Building JavaScript Plugins.

A plugin is a bit of software that is loaded by the JW Player and to extend it's core functionality. By default, plugins are hosted on LongTail Video's servers, so you don't need to download them to your own server. All you need to do to use a plugin is include a reference to it in your player's configuration.

Flash plugins written in ActionScript 3 have been supported by the JW Player since version 4.1. In JW Player 5.5, we introduced JavaScript plugins. This enables devices like the iPhone and iPad to get access to the same plugin functionality already available in Flash. It's worth noting that the player will run JavaScript plugins in both Flash mode and HTML5 mode, while Flash plugins will only run when the player is in Flash mode.

Contents

Finding Plugins

The plugins section of our addons site is the place to go if you're looking for plugins. You can search for new plugins, browse the most popular plugins, and buy a license for commercial plugins. Every plugin page contains setup instructions and examples. The library also tells you if the plugin you're interested in will work with your version of the player.

Using a Single Plugin

Let's say you want to get the Viral plugin running on your site. First, acquire the necessary plugin variable by clicking 'Get This' for the plugin in the AddOns section of the LongTail site (in this case, it's viral-1 ). Second, add a reference to this plugin to your HTML code. The following example demonstrates Viral in action:

Using Multiple Plugins

Using multiple plugins is a snap. If you'd like to add another plugin to the player simply separate their variable names with commas.

Note: Be sure not to add any spaces to your string and do not list any plugins twice. This will cause problems with your player.

Setting Plugin Options

Now that you've successfully configured your player to load the plugin you may need to perform some additional configuration specific to the plugin. Let's use the Google Analytics Pro plugin as an example.

GAPro allows for several additional configuration settings. For example, you must set a flashvar that provides your Google Analytics Account ID.

Plugins and Playlists

Some plugins (like Captions, HD and Sharing) will accept configuration options from playlist items. This allows you to reconfigure the plugin for every clip in the list. Plugin-specific options are always added to playlists through the JW Player namespace. Here is an example, setting an hd.file for every item in a playlist:

Using a Specific Version of a Plugin

LongTail takes care to make sure that our plugins continue to work across all versions of the player. However, we sometimes introduce functionality that is incompatible with a previous version of the plugin. That's why LongTail takes care to version all plugins. This means that even if a plugin dramatically changes, you can continue to run the original with no impact to your player.

To use a specific version of a plugin, simply add the version number to the plugin's name in the configuration. For example, if we wanted to use AgeGate version 2.0, we would simply reference agegate-2.0 in our configuration, rather than agegate.

Note:We recommend using only major version numbers unless you are instructed by our staff to switch over to a minor version number. Major version numbers indicate changes in functionality. Minor versions indicate bugfixes and enhancements.

Positioning a Plugin

Several plugins contain visual assets, which can be positioned over or around the player. Let's use Flow as an example. This plugin takes items from your playlist and displays them in a coverflow-like format. However, you can set a flashvar that defines where the playlist should appear.

Building Plugins

If you're interested in building plugins, you should check out our plugin development guides: