Ask Charly Leetham - Latest Comments

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

amediaguy — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:25:18 -0000

Charly, what do you use to encode your mp4 for use with JWPlayer. The player will only play sound and it stays black

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

James Reeves — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:50:13 -0000

Thanks for the video tutorial Charly. That's just what I was looking for. I don't know why it was so hard to find this info. You made it easier to find this info than the developer did. Keep up the good work.

James Reeves

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Loretta — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:54:34 -0000

GOT IT! I worked on this day and night for DAYS. Here's the deal. People have to encode their MP4 videos so that their combined bitrate for audio and video does NOT exceed their viewers' internet connection speed. So, let's say your user of the lowest internet connection has a connection of 256 kbps. You need to encode video around 200 and audio around 56 each for the bitrate settings.

NEXT and most importantly, this thing called the "moov atom" has to go the FRONT of the video instead of the back - where it makes the video fully load before playing. Moov atom is some indexing thing for the video. Normally it's at the end, but must go at the beginning in order to "stream" the video. Some people use QTindexSwapper free software, but if you use Handbrake, just checkmark the "web optimized" box to do this.

Flash is becoming obsolete - because it does not play on many mobile devices, whereas mp4 formats play on almost anything.

www.handbrake.fr has FREE video encoding software for both Mac AND PC. It's awesome and user-freindly. Also lets you burn/copy your DVD's, etc., nicely.

I hope this helps everyone who may ask you similar questions! I now have NO problems with my videos on JW Player and Amazon S3 and I don't even use Cloudfront to optimize speed - although you could use that with A S3, to make video delivery even faster.

Whew! I really learned far more than I wanted to!

-Loretta

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Charly Leetham — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:26:46 -0000

Hi Thomas, I thought I had responded to your question but obviously not! In general, most video players will co-exist with each other but you do need to check it out.

I've used JW Player with two or three other plugins and haven't had any issues.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Charly Leetham — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:24:29 -0000

Hi Jesse - glad it helped. I know exactly waht you mean by the nudge in the right direction.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Charly Leetham — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:23:20 -0000

Hi Loretta! Thank you for kudo's.

Yeah, encoding videos is normally the issue. I've spent hours reviewing issues for some of my clients.

I'm assuming that your video player shows the swirly thing that indicates that the video will start playing? But it just shows the black screen - and if you wait long enough, it will eventually play.

I'm not familiar with Handbrake - and only use a PC.

Perhaps you could share a link to a video that isn't working and we can take a look?
And hopefully, MAC Users who also use Handbrake will chime in too!

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Loretta — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:56:58 -0000

WOW and HELP! I came across your video on YouTube - it was the BEST for helping me set up JW Player. Thanks, Charly!

*** BUT BUT BUT, when I embed, I can't get my MP4 video to load in the player. It tries, but takes forever... I think I may need to re-encode it to stream better or something????? I can't find the answer. Looked everywhere, and am more confused than ever...

*** I just want to use Amazon S3, JW Player, and embed a 20-minute video on a wordpress page.

What settings should I use to encode? I have "Handbrake." I use a Mac.
Oh, if someone, anyone could just help me!!!

Please please please can anyone help??? I am kinda new at this and don't know who to ask or what to do! :-0

THANKS!!! wolring[at]yahoo.com

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Jesse Watson — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:05:32 -0000

GREAT VIDEO, I was looking forever to find the JW Player's "insert into post" button. Sometimes you need a little nudge in the right direction. =D

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Slavica — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:00:58 -0000

Hello Charly,
thank you for the great videos.
Keep up the great work.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Jimmi — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:34:01 -0000

Hi Charly, Thanks for the videos. Very clear and easy to understand.

Re: wp Membership site

Charly Leetham — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:55:46 -0000

Hi Untoro,
The site you share is way more than just a membership site. It is also a shopping cart.
I don't know of just 1 plugin that will let you do this - I suspect it will require a couple.

The Shopping Cart plugin to take payment and record the sales information
The 'membership' plugin to restrict access to the Shopping Cart admin to 'members' only.

Before embarking on this type of project, you really need to define exactly what you want to achieve:
1. How many products can each member add?
2. Will the number of products vary based on the type of member?
3. How do you want to take payment from the public who purchase the products?
4. How do you want to take payment from the members who join?
5. How will you pay your members for their sales?

These are just a few of the questions that came to mind when I reviewed your question.
The solution you put in place will depend on those answers.

Re: Wishlist –> Aweber w/o confirmation?

Charly Leetham — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:47:42 -0000

Hi Don,

Great question, and one that gets asked a lot in Wishlist Insider.
The short answer, is you can't do what you're asking to do, because it breaches AWebers Terms of Service and will get your account shut down.

Aweber are very strict about how members are added to lists and will only allow entries from the webform or through their email parsers. When you integrate with a system like Wishlist Member, it uses the email parser - and this requires opt in confirmation no matter what.

If you use a webform, it is possible to have a single opt in list.

That said, we're working on an integration that will allow members to subscribe to AWeber first and then be automatically to the membership via the WLM API - it's still in alpha testing - but it will allow you to do what you want. When it's ready to public release, I'll announce it.

Re: How to load YouTube videos onto a web page and into an email – newsletter style.

Charly Leetham — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:15:44 -0000

Hi Marg,

Hopefully this video will help you work out how to do it!
http://askcharlyleetham.com/po...

Re: Wishlist Member and Enhanced Paypal Shortcodes Plugin

Charly Leetham — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:21:38 -0000

Hi Tim,

You need to set the RETURNURL and NOTIFYURL parameters for the shortcode to those provided in the Wishlist member integration screen. You won't need any php code, just the correct urls.

To find that information, log into your wp-admin, and navigate to WL Plugins -> WL Member
Select the Integration Tab, and then select the Shopping Cart tab on that screen.
From the drop down menu, select Paypal
Scroll down the screen and find "Step 4: Set the "Thank You" URL of each product to the following URL" - this is the url you use in the shortcode.

Your shortcode will look something like this:

[ paypal type="paynow" amount="12.99" email="youremail@domainname.com"
itemno="12345657" name="Description" noshipping="1" nonote="1" qty="1"
shipping="4.00" shipping2="1.00" currencycode="USD"
imageurl="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i..." rm="2"
notifyurl="http://notifyurl.com" returnurl="http://returnurl.com"
imagewidth="100px" pagestyle="paypal" lc="AU"
cbt="Complete Your Purchase" ]

Re: 1ShoppingCart and iDevAffiliate

Charly Leetham — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:14:50 -0000

Hi Phil,

Unfortunately, no I haven't found a way to use 1Shopping Cart and any form of 3rd party system that requires notification for recurring billing.

The main issue is that 1SC just does not tell us the charge has been made successfully, so the 3rd party system can't be triggered to "do it's thing" and record commissions etc. This isn't just limited to iDevAffiliate either, it affects anything that requires a notice from 1SC that a payment has been made on a recurring basis.

The initial payment however, is recorded successfully - so if you wanted to do 1 off commissions, it works like a dream.

Personally, I've gone with a completely different solution to 1SC because of these types of issues.

Re: Will Facebook Be Charging For Membership?

Ejvind — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 02:37:04 -0000

Ha ha - Facebook charging for their basic service. That would be like google charging for search. I'm sure both would love to, but it's not something people would acept on a grand scale. Good story though :-)

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Charly Leetham — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:41:38 -0000

Hi Thomas,

I've used JW Player with a couple of other video plugins, without issue but there's no such thing as a sure thing. Some wordpress video plugins just conflict with each other - you will have to test it, but in the main, I've used two plugins on a few sitesw without issue.

In a lot of cases, I have actually gone back through and updated the codes in my old posts to use the new shortcode, but it can be a lot of work... so I get that you may not want to do that.

thanks for the lovely comment and I'm glad my posts have been helpful

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Thomas Colvin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:26:46 -0000

Charly, I have a blog that over a year old, with lots of YouTube video already in it. I am about to dramatically upgrade my site and plan to add S3 streaming and the JW Player. Do I need to go back through all past posts and re-enter info into the JW Player -- or will JW Player co-exist with my current player so that no updating of posts is necessary?

THANKS for your posts. Very helpful to me as I prepare to take this big plunge.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Eric — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:13:36 -0000

Hey Charly,

Thanks, it worked great! I recorded the video with Camtasia and changed the indexing. I'm not sure what fixed it, but it did. I will just record the same way now in the future. Thanks!

Eric

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Charly Leetham — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:18:36 -0000

Hi Eric,
Are you getting any sound at all?
Typically, the black screen is an encoding issue. I don't really understand the whole ins and outs of it, and I'm sure there's a video technoboffin who can explain it in more detail.

I use Camtasia and AnyDVD Convertor as my two main video production tools and haven't had any issues - but I have had clients who have created videos and experienced the 'black' screen.

The last time we addressed this, we found this tutorial to be very helpful in resolving the issues:
http://www.miracletutorials.co...

One final note - some video convertors will put the "indexing" marker right near the end of the video. This means that the video has to nearly fully download before it will start playing. If you find that your video is just downloading and not playing after a couple of seconds (or less), you need to move the index marker. I've used YAMB (http://yamb.unite-video.com/) quite successfully to do this. It doesn't mess with the video encoding at all, just moves the index marker to the front of the video, so once it starts downloading, the computer gets the "start playing now" instruction sooner.

HTH
Charly.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Charly Leetham — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:06:22 -0000

Hi Michael,
I haven't done anything particularly special. I use AMAZON S3 distribution, not cloudfront.
When you say it doesn't play, what happens? Nothing, or do you get an error?
Feel free to post a link to the page with the issues and we'll see if we can help.
Charly.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Eric — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:29:57 -0000

Hello Charly,
Any idea why when I add a video from my S3 to my blog, I get the thumbnail photo fine, the video starts with audio but I only have a black screen in the JW player? It's a blank black screen the entire video. Thanks. I have gone through the instructions a few times and I don't think I am missing anything.

Re: Using JW Player, WordPress, Amazon S3 & Youtube

Michael — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:26:32 -0000

Hi Charley,

I've tried implementing as per 2nd video and cannot get it to play. Did you set up a Cloudfront distribution?

Michael

Re: Identify Yourself! Financial Institutions: Social Engineering At It’s Best???

Charly Leetham — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:12:38 -0000

I LOVE that I have to give them my personal details just so they'll sell to me - not! Not that I like being sold to. It really cuts down on a heap of sales calls though, when you don't provide your personal details...

Re: Identify Yourself! Financial Institutions: Social Engineering At It’s Best???

Jane — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:25:34 -0000

I'm with Sharyn on this one too. I absolutely refuse to give any personal details to anyone who has called me! My bank also has a password system which I find reassuring. I moved from the UK to Australia in 2008 and have been astounded at the amount of calls I get from all sorts of institutions asking for personal information and also wanting me to purchase things from them there and then. I refused to purchase some raffle tickets from a very reputable charity the other day who 'cold called' and expected me to give them my credit details. The lady on the other end was astounded - she also did not know my home address to send me more information, and I refused to give her that too! Telstra yesterday called and asked me to confirm my address, DoB, phone number before they could fill me in on their latest deals ...