h1. JW Flash Player ActionView Helper

h2. What Is It?

jw-playr-hlpr is Rails plugin that presents an ActionView wrapper for rendering "JW Player 4.3":http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/ using SWOObject

"JW Player":http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/ is a popular open source Media (FLV, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF) player.

h2. Getting Started

Download and extract into vendor/plugins/jw-playr-hlpr

rake jw_player:install to copy over player.swf and swfobject.js to public/swf and pubilc/javascript

javascript_include_tag 'swfobject' in your application or page layout

inside your view <%= player (:file => '/library/video.flv', :image => '/library/splash.flv)' %> where :file is the FLV video to play and optionally :image which will render a splash image. Note that both :file and :image are relative to your website's public folder. So if public = /home/my/site/public then :file => '/library/video.flv' will actually be in /home/my/site/public/library/video.flv. The same applies to :image.

h2. More Info

The jw-playr-hlpr plugin adds the player(player_options, flash_options) function to all your views.

player_options is a hash that can contain the player's "flashvars":http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/wiki/FlashVars variable. The minimum required is {:file => '/path/from/public_html/video.flv').

flash_options is an optional hash to contain additional or override "Adobe flash parameters":http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_12701&sliceId=2.

The plugin defines the following default flash_options:

 :player_id         => 'jw_player',
 :id                => 'flash_player',
 :allowfullscreen   => 'true',
 :allowscriptaccess => 'true',
 :play              => 'true',
 :menu              => 'false',
 :quality           => 'autohigh',
 :scale             => 'default',
 :width             => 400,
 :height            => 300,

To override the JW Player dimensions:

@<%= player({:file => '/path/video.flv'},{:width => 640, :height => 480}) %>@

h2. Skins

I've added a selection of skins alongside this plugin:

• "bluemetal":http://www.longtailvideo.com/addons/download-skin.php?addon=60
• "snel":http://www.longtailvideo.com/addons/skins/24/Snel
• "dangdang":http://www.longtailvideo.com/addons/skins/18/DangDang
• "stijl":http://www.longtailvideo.com/addons/skins/25/Stijl

Skins are copied to Rails.root/public/swf/skins and can be set either in the helper:

   '/my/file/flv', :skin => 'bluemetal') %>

Alternatively, a default skin can be specified globally by adding the following to your environment.rb:

  PSP::JwPlayerHelper::DEFAULT_SKIN = 'bluemetal'

The plugin assumes that all skin swf files will be stored in Rails.root/public/swf/skins. Any new skins can be placed in this folder.

h2. Credits

This plugin is based on on "Farooq Ali's Flash Playr Hlpr":http://www.jroller.com/abstractScope/entry/flash_mp3_imageslideshow_media_player excellent plugin

Farooq's Player includes JW Player 3.x and ufo.js. JW Player has since been updated to 4.x to support tasty new features likes skins, plugins and modules.