/video_xh

Video plugin for CMSimple_XH

Primary LanguagePHPGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

Video_XH

Video_XH facilitates presenting videos on a CMSimple_XH site. It uses the HTML5 video element wherever possible, and provides a a download link as fallback otherwise. The supported video formats depend on the browser.

For each video additional schema.org compliant markup will be generated, so search engines can index and show the videos in search results.

Requirements

Video_XH requires CMSimple_XH ≥ 1.7.0 and PHP ≥ 7.1.0.

Download

The lastest release is available for download on Github.

Installation

The installation is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins. See the CMSimple_XH Wiki for further details.

  1. Backup the data on your server.
  2. Unzip the distribution on your computer.
  3. Upload the whole directory video/ to your server into the plugins directory of CMSimple_XH.
  4. Set write permissions for the subdirectories config/, css/ and languages/.
  5. Navigate to Plugins → Video in the back-end to check if all requirements are fulfilled.

Settings

The configuration of the plugin is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins in the back-end of the Website. Go to Plugins → Video.

You can change the default settings of Video_XH under Config. Hints for the options will be displayed when hovering over the help icons with your mouse.

Localization is done under Language. You can translate the character strings to your own language (if there is no appropriate language file available), or customize them according to your needs.

The look of Video_XH can be customized under Stylesheet.

Usage

As Video_XH provides no such possibility, you have to upload your video files to the configured video folder via FTP, a file browser or Uploader_XH. Supported video formats are MP4 (AVC Baseline@L3.0/AAC), WebM (VP8/Vorbis) and OGG (Theora/Vorbis). You can easily convert your videos to these formats with XMedia Recode (use the HTML 5 profile). To support all major browsers you should upload a *.mp4 and a *.webm/*.ogv version of the video. Additionally you might want to upload a so-called poster to the same folder, i.e. an image, that will be displayed before the video is started, in JPEG format (*.jpg).

To display a video on a CMSimple_XH page insert the following plugin call in the content:

{{{video('%NAME%', '%OPTIONS%')}}}

The meaning of the placeholders:

  • %NAME%: The name of the video file without any extension. Actually, this is a path relative to the configured video folder.

  • %OPTIONS%: Options for each video as a string in the same format as a query string (everything after the question mark in an HTTP GET request). Options that are left out default to the respective values in the configuration of the plugin. You can use the Call Builder offered in the plugin administration, and optionally in a tab above the editor, to assemble the plugin call for you. After you are finished entering the desired values, just copy the content of the textarea at the bottom and paste it in a page. If you paste an existing plugin call into this textarea, the plugin call will be parsed and the controls updated, what allows for easy editing.

To display a video on all pages, insert the following in the template:

<?=video('%NAME%', '%OPTIONS%')?>

Examples

{{{video('LotR')}}}

This will display the LotR.webm, LotR.mp4 or LotR.ogv video in the configured video folder with the configured width and height. If LotR.jpg exists, it will be used as poster.

{{{video('music/thriller', 'width=320&height=240')}}}

Will display the thriller video in the subfolder music/, with a size of 320px × 240px. Note that scaling the video for playback might not be the best option.

{{{video('banner', 'autoplay&loop&controls=0')}}}

Will autoplay the banner video starting over when finished without showing any controls. This is particularly useful for banner or background videos, but may be annoying for your visitors.

Subtitles

On supporting browsers, the video players can optionally display subtitles. The subtitles have to be in separate files (not muxed into the container), where WebVTT is the recommended file format, though SRT might also work. Just place a respective file *.vtt (or *.srt) beside the video files, and visitors are able to activate the subtitles if they like.

For multilingual websites you will want to have subtitles in multiple languages. Just name them *_LANG.vtt (or *_LANG.srt), e.g. video_en.vtt (or video_de.vtt. The player will offer only the subtitles of the currently selected language.

Limitations

The call builder is only available under a contempary browser; for instance, IE 9 is not supported.

Troubleshooting

In case the video does not play at all, the video might be served with an unappropriate MIME type. If this is the case, you probably can configure your Apache Webserver with the following lines in .htaccess:

AddType video/webm .webm
AddType video/mp4 .mp4
AddType video/ogg .ogv

If you use a Webserver other than Apache, or that configuration does not work, ask your hosting provider or server admin to do the necessary configuration.

If the video cannot be played immediately, it is probably due to an encoding or muxing error. It seems many MP4 muxers put the moov atom at the end of the video, what requires the player to download the complete file, before the playback starts. It is best to try to remux the video with Yamb (for MP4) or MKVToolNix (for WebM).

Report bugs and ask for support either on Github or in the CMSimple_XH Forum.

License

Video_XH is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Video_XH is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantibility or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Video_XH. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

© 2012-2023 Christoph M. Becker

Danish translation © 2012 Jens Maegard
Czech translation © 2012 Josef Němec
Slovak translation © 2012 Dr. Martin Sereday

Credits

The plugin icon is designed by Alessandro Rei. Many thanks for releasing it under GPL.

Many thanks to the community at the CMSimple_XH-Forum for tips, suggestions and testing. Particularly I want to thank bca for being the first beta tester, for contributing the tube and tube2 skins (for the old video player which has now been superseded) and informing me about Video.js 4, and Ulrich and Holger who inspired the subtitle support.

And last but not least many thanks to Peter Harteg, the “father” of CMSimple, and all developers of CMSimple_XH without whom this amazing CMS would not exist.