mastermind

Our player is flash based so flashplayer must be installed on the users computer. Depending on any type of media content you put media on a website some player must be installed... ie Windows Media Player, Quicktime player, flashplayer The great thing about flashplayer is that it is the most prolific software on the planet installed on more computers than any other media player reaching over 98% of the world market. Additionally it is the smallest and fastest download and if a user does not have it installed (which is almost never) they will be prompted to download it from Adobe. To play h.264 encoded videos regardless of the flash based video player you use a visitor must have flashplayer 9 or higher installed. Flashplayer 9 has more than 97% world market penetration. Our player does use javascript for the include. It also uses javascript and dhtml if you use the advanced dhtml popup features. You could not do that without scripting.

Hi Mark, At the minimum you must be able to copy and paste html code into your page's html code where you want the player to appear. In addition to that there are variables that cotrol functions of our player. For example the documentation will tell you to make it autoplay you need to change false to true in the html code. or to use a dhtml layer and make it appear above a page in the position you want you will need to change the setting to a number from 1 to 9 representing various positions wich each value we explain in the documentation. So I would say for a user like you who does not have or want to obtain basic html understanding my player is not the right fit. But I also recommend that everyone learn at least to be able to copy and paste html so that they can make minor changes to their wysiwyg designs and paste in script includes etc into their html pages.

We developed my player and the dhtml/javascript library from scratch. So no. Not sure why you would ask that? Its our own invention and it was developed specifically to provide functions and features that other players on the market lack. My philosophy is this: 1. If it is the best recommend it 2. If it is free and the best recommend it 3. If its not the best develop it So in this case there was no other player that did what I wanted to accomplish so we created our own project with no other outside contributions and from our own code which is not "open." Its a private development project and more of a "specialized" player given its unique features and functions for which it was designed. We own all the code and copyrights to the scripts and source code.

Hi Guys, I just popped in to check out the discussion... and it looks like there is quite a bit going on so I should probably read over your posts and see if I can offer any answers and insight into my product. I will try and pop in and offer some answers soon. My thoughts on the pricing concern is this: 1. Concerns on price are related to a personal budget rather than the features of the product. Value is relative to value derived from actual use of what is received. To get the return of value from the investment you must be prepared to use the item to accomplish specific goals. One company published one video which was nothing more than someone speaking for 15 seconds on their site. They paid $900 for the actor, the shoot, the editing, and the player which took about 4 hours to put together. That one video increased their conversion rate by 12%. That 12% represented a $200,000 increase in sales over a year time. Not a bad ROI. The player is similar... if used and if used properly you can derive significant value from its use. Even a financial ROI if you are using it to present video content that can bring you additional business. Now here is another perspective: Comparing my player to products from major software companies is like comparing a hand crafted hardwood desk that sells for $5,000 to an entire group of furniture purchased at Wal-Mart for $500. The quality of our product speaks for itself but the value is derived from its use :-) My promise is that if you do not like it we offer a guarantee. You don't get that from large software companies. You also do not get a player of this magnitude from anywhere but individual dedicated crafts people such as our selves. It actually took me 18 months patient searching and various research and development activities and my partner several years of research and development and then both of us together several months of collaboration, testing, and development to produce it. You get it for the bargain price of $119 :-) And because of your support of us we continue to provide updates to the product free of charge and invent other amazing things in the future. 2. Yes there definitely are alternatives. 3. No, there is no other player that does anything close to what our player does with its various features and included dhtml script. ======== Concepts behind the player ======== Now having said that it is important to note that this is not an average video player and I would also like to offer some ideas, concepts, and perspectives you may find helpful. The transparent player was designed with streaming video optimization and direct response video optimization strategies in mind. Additionally part of the development included breaking new ground with dhtml, javascript, and on site behaviors not previously attempted in any other commercially offered player. Think of it as a creative work... but also one that is continuing to be created. We have imagined several other unique effects that we will add to the project and provide as free updates to the users. While I am not well acquainted with either your community or much of what you do I did preview some beautiful slide show demos and the idea of seeing that quality of images played in h.264 video is quite intriguing. Since you know your niche better than I do I would need to look to you to see examples of how you might use my player. However, my own personal strategies in publishing lead us to create the player so that you can control many aspects of how it can be displayed and played ranging from a floating layer that auto plays to an embedded player with the option to use the first frame of your video as a start image or even an external image as the start frame. In my mind the most important of our long list of features is how the player buffers and how it loads. Also how it behaves after stop is pressed. These various aspects are ultimately important so that the publisher can choose to target bit rates appropriate for the speed of the internet connection that their average visitor has in order to make their videos load and play seemingly instantly and without the stuttering and buffering problems that even the most professional video production companies struggle with because they do not understand the simple concepts of direct response video publishing. Regarding the h.264 format... official support for playing this format in a flash based video player was not released until the end of 2008 with the official release of flashplayer 9 so support for h.264 playback is fairly new. We wanted to create a player that supported the highest quality formats that publishers can use for video online such as flv encoded with vp6 and mov and mp4 encoded with h.264. Some of the most popular encoding solutions such as Flix 8 Standard from On2.com ($39) and Flix 8 pro $250 and Sorenson Squeeze for flash pro $299 from SorensonMedia.com work great or encoding h.264 but also I have found great results encoding HD using the HD vp6 encoding settings in Flix Pro and Sorenson Squeeze. Also note that Quicktime pro from apple ($29) can encode h.264 video. I am sure you guys have your own favorites and probably know some encoding solutions commonly used in your industry that I am not as acquainted with. The key to great looking video will depend on the bit rate you encode at and the codec you use and in part the encoder that you use and the encoding process such as vbr and multi pass will also effect your end results. The lower the bit rate... the lower the quality of the image... But you must find balance too when you are delivering video on the web. You need to always encode your video at a bit rate lower than the connection speed of your target market. If your target market is US broadband you need to consider that a good percentage of the US market is on slow broadband connections at 256kbps. If they try and view a 500kbps video you will need to set the buffer time to be longer so that it can load enough to stop from stuttering. While I am not a pro video producer you can see an example of a larger hd video on my site (the one embedded directly in the page). I encoded that HD video at a bit rate lower than 256 and set the buffer time to 1 second. That ensures that my videos play instantly without any buffering after that initial second of load time. My transparent videos are encoded at bit rates around 150kbps or less to ensure ultra fast loading. However, in your market people are willing to wait for things to load to see the beauty of the production you create so you can get away with setting the buffer time a little longer... but I recommend not longer than 10 seconds generally which still means you need to optimize your bit rates. If people are really interested in your content they will be willing to wait longer and you can experiment with offering high bit rate and lower bit rate options so that the impatient can see a fast preview and the patient can wait for the HQ HD version to load at a higher bit rate to deliver higher image quality. =================================================== Concepts regarding on page publishing and optimization strategies ==================================================== Another thing to consider about your market... you all are suggesting displaying videos at high resolutions. Big wide large videos. These are best not embedded directly in a web page... My player includes dhtml layer scripting that allows your visitors to trigger video to play in a floating layer that can be positioned anywhere in the page including absolute center. These videos can be triggered by links or thumbnails or start images etc. This allows you to create nicely organized sites with professional looking preview lists and when a video is done playing the layer can auto close or if they press stop the layer vanishes or if they click another link or thumbnail the layer vanishes. With the transparent player you are really only limited by your own creativity... It was designed to be minimal so as to keep emphasis on your content and it was designed to be optimized so as to deliver your content fast and efficiently. Also note that most players do not have "loading" controls that go as far as our player does. If you were to say embed 5 youtube videos in one page you risk a problem I call "video tasting." Video tasting is where a visitor clicks and plays the first few seconds of each video embedded in the page to see which one they want to watch. They stop or pause each after a couple seconds of preview and move to the next. The problem is that all those players they clicked may not be playing but they are still downloading the files in the background. The transparent player eliminates this problem. When stop is pressed the video stops loading. When play is pressed it resumes loading. They can taste as many videos as they want on your page without the loading problem Traditionally what would happen is once so many files started loading as soon as the kbps of the visitors internet connection was maxed from those loading files their browser would slow or even freeze. Many times the only solution was to close the browser or refresh... then the problem starts all over again. I am sure you have experienced this before. This is do to poor on page file optimization and video players are the wost culprit. But that is not the case with Transparent Player. Visitors can preview your works with ease and the load is limited to only one video file at a time which can be optimized to target the speed of your target market. Last of all there is the bandwidth issue. Some players upon revisit or replay reload the video file needlessly downloading the file again from your server over and over each time a person visits a page and sometimes for some players each time they replay the video. Transparent player plays the video from the cache every time. Once a file is cashed it will play from the cache on subsequent plays and even subsequent visits to the page. Only if the visitor has cleared their cache would the video be reloaded. This and your own file compression optimization strategies can save you a ton in bandwidth. Most people will never have enough traffic for this to be much of a concern and there are some really great economy hosting solutions out there such as www.aplus.net , which I have tested with hundreds of thousands of video views, which offer huge amounts of bandwidth for under $10 a month. But other companies using services such as Amazon S3's unlimited pay as you go plans who see significant volumes of views reaching into the hundreds of thousands and even millions of views can get shockers when it comes to time to pay the bill. If you optimize your video via encoding compression strategies and if you use a player such as transparent player that plays from the cache you can significantly reduce your bandwidth consumption. Last of all and probably most important of all... when you are able to stream h.264 in a flash video player you have far greater market reach than quicktime player and windows media player. Flashplayer is a smaller download for those that do not have it instealled but it is estimated that more than 98% of computers in the world have Flashplayer installed and 97%+ have Flashplayer 9 installed which supports h.264 playback. For those that do not have it installed it is only a 2mb download and an instant installation. If you are publishing any video content online you should never publish it with anything except for a flash based player to ensure your market reach and ease of consumption. That's all the insights I have to share for now... I look forward to seeing the creative uses you all come up with for the transparent player. It is always my users that come up with the most powerful strategies for publishing with my tools. My goal is always just to provide a highly versatile and leading edge solution that frees the publisher up to accomplish their goals. If you are a user of Transparent Player do not forget that our support desk is the place to go for any tech support issues. Regards, Josh Anderson http://transparentplayer.com