we are building

What is a blog worth if its not filled with bloggable events? Nothing! As such and with a little delay I herewith follow my personal New Year´s Resolutions and (re)start to fill this project´s blog with sense and life. So, what happened the last nine month (mate, can´t believe how fast times passes by)?

• Projekktor got featured on WEBM ´s home.
• We saw stunning startups using Projekktor as framework for content playout.
• The player got implemented to the web presence  of germany´s most popular news service.
• The project became a commercial base for 3rd party companies like DMXZone - btw: they create stunning Dreamweaver-Plugins. Go, take a look.
• The blokes at Artetics built nice little plugin using Projekktor to provide HTML5 video to Joomla.
• We started a spin-off in cooperation with porkhead.org – it did a rocket launch: Speakker … it became a story for its own.

So, what can you expect from this projekkt in the near future? Right now there are two major jobs in progress. The most important one is still ProjekktorXL You thought it´s dead, didn´t you? Well, we are working hard on it and you can bet that we´ll keep you updated.

Btw: Did I say “keep you updated”? Well, in case you´re on this “Facebook”-thingy feel free to join our chit chat at Projekktor´s Facebook HQ .

The other projekkt is our upcoming “media player design platform”. As our beloved Speakker example shows, with the help of Projekktor you can morph almost any HTML-layout into ubercool media player regardless if for video or audio or both. Unfortunately a fact that wasn´t communicated very well in the past. So we´ve decided to break some shit and push things into the right direction. I wouldn´t say that the outcome will be groundbreaking. But if we will be able to provide  a useful tool for designers allowing them to build a web based media interface without taking care of the technical stuff we could be satisfied.

Stay tuned!

Don´t get me wrong. There are a couple of products to choose from. The top dogs are Flowplayer and of course the good old JWplayer – chapeau Jeroen.  Both are good and close to perfect. But – even if they are “open source” – they are not free at all. You are in fact limited in what you can do with them. I do not talk about copyrights. I talk about usage, environments and/or branding you choose. In order to break the chains you have pay for them.  And I think this is absolutely OK. Good products like those are worth every penny and – like ordinary humans – programmers can´t live from donations and air alone. On the other hand sometimes even “worth the money” is too expensive.

As you might know Projekktor features a flash fallback. To provide this feature I began to write plain and simple flash components. One for audio and one video (don´t ask why I did not merge both into one – I am an idiot).  Just to let you know up front: They where not very good. So, like most of the HTML5 video players with fallback out there I could have taken one of the projects mentioned above. But I didn´t want to. Why? Because I wanted the WHOLE project to be free for everyone to use in any way he or she wants to. What is all this free JS HTML5 video mess worth if only one single component of it – like, let´s say, the flash fallback one – limits you in the way you can use the software? I would say not enough. But maybe I am an idealist and maybe so is Jefferson González who writes the fantastic Jarisplayer.

Jaris Player offers what many users of Projekktor wanted to have as an option: RTMP support and flv-pseudo streaming for example. You can´t imagine how happy I was to find Jefferson´s project. He did a great job on his solution.  And intentionally he didn´t include  common “limitations” like hidden tracking of player embeds, watermarks or similar stuff. Even better: Jaris is still under active development.

So, is Jarisplayer better than other players today you may ask.  I would say: Most likely not. You can´t beat a team of programmers working for years on a single player. But as I understood Jefferson Jarisplayer does not want to beat anything but wants to fill the gap that existed a frighteningly long time between professional commercial players and useless junk. What a wonderful and great idea.

So I would like to thank Jefferson for allowing me to add his work to this project and would like to encourage you to consider a donation for Jarisplayer.

What do you think?

Against the background of the lack of frequent updates during the last weeks I received mails from concerned users asking if the project was just a flash in the pan.  All I can say is: No worries, mates,  the opposite is true.

As some of you might know Projekktor started back in 2007 as a  Flash webTV project free for everyone to use. Some of you might also know that hacking Flash is a pain in the ass and as such very expensive – regardless if measured in time, money, heart, sanity or whatever. That´s why I began to hack all the mess from scratch again. This time using as much  Javascript,  HTML(5) and CSS(3) as possible. The very first results are available  here today.

Thanks to some very kind donations I was able to buy enough beer to get the super-powers needed to hack a kinda copy of the original interface using the projekktor source and some imagination. In my humble opinion it looks great and the overall experience isn´t that bad. I can´t hardly wait to install a public demo but poor unlucky me there are some holidays to be taken.  Stay tuned, keep care and see ya.

Btw: If the ” 10 Feet Interface Lean Back Media Library Web Stuff ” will be for free you ask? Well, you can bet on it (as long as you are not a company)!

Basically it provides “shortcodes” allowing you to easily insert HTML5 video into your posts by using a simple  tag. To add the pleasing touch of Projekktor it also installs the projekktor.js (wordpress edition)  and a tiny admin backend.

dream team

But the best thing is that the plugin automatically generates a playlist out of your videos posted which allows you to provide a stunning telly like experience.

Get your personal copy at our download section. The documentation will soon be is available here.

What this post is all about? About Projekktor of cause, the HTML5 Flash Hybrid Video Player and VIDEO tag extension adding unique possibilities to enhance the on site video experience for your users and offers new opportunities to monetize and control your video content. Come on, give it a try at http://www.projekktor.com.

The documentation included is still rudimentary but experienced web workers will find it very easy to add the player to any project which is using the new video tag.

If you have problems to get the player running on your site or if you have any suggestions how to make the player itself better you´re heartily invited to add a post to the project´s discussion forum.

Have Fun

compatible browsers:
IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 3.0+, Opera 10+, Safari 4+, Chrome 4+
IE6 uses flash fallback only of course.

The best thing is that it is proved to be compatible to iPhone (apart from the fact that the current demo page features a quite too big dimensioned player instance) and 100% iPad ready.

Reasons to celebrate and to finally concentrate on a wordpress plugin and a nice bundled download package. See ya, mates!