Plyr integration coming soon.

UNA 10 will include a few significant improvements for videos publishing, transcoding and playback. Now we decided to integrate the Plyr media player as a UNA App, which would allow to use it for all videos on the site (both in Videos module and in the new video attachments in other modules).

We've chosen Plyr for the permissive MIT license (same as UNA), lightweight and a great feature set, covering our immediate needs and more. So, things like playback quality selector, picture-in-picture, monetization and even some form of YouTube embeds is on the way. 

Stay tuned! 

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    • Nice!

      • Nice job... 

        Please try to work on the injection too. Some of us have problem adding codes to the <head> through INJECTION at studio. Personally, I've not been able to implement adsense on my website because the Injection won't load in the code. It's even more depressing when you want to add other web master codes too. Like Onesignal and all. 

        • Pretty much an early version of JWplayer...   Been waiting for the playback quality approach for a long time now. I think I suggested this for the "other" script maybe 8 plus years ago....    Any thoughts on back porting to the "other" script ?  Also if at all possible please make it 4K compatible (2160P) if it's not already.

          Anyway should be a nice addition to have.  Thanks.

          AKA dolphin_jay...

          • JWplayer is nice, but it’s OEM-licensed, with free edition limited to 5000 plays a month. We generally try to go for products with MIT licenses if possible. 

            That said, once we get one integrated, there’s every opportunity to integrate other options. 

            As for integrating it for DolphinPro - no plans as of yet. 

            • Oh i was just saying it reminds me of JWplayer...  The way it's coded and used and features.  I agree JW would not be the best idea for UNA... been there done that already with Pro and UNA. 

              • I understand your need to not compromise your standards but you should at the very least keep that among your options

                • I was looking at PeerTube earlier. A new player, you say? I did not see that, looks good! Just one issue... if CC is on, it is small to read on 4K screen.

                  • So with monetization, will we be able to put ads from any ad company into the player? Also, can it have pre-roll video ads instead of banners? Also, what is the benefit of Plyr over VideoJS?

                    • Kit Cloudkicker I just looked at PeerTube for the first time and it looks cool. I'm getting ready to launch an instance of it. Andrew Boon I think we should integrate PeerTube as a UNA app.

                      • PeerTube is nice, though it’s not a player. It’s a decentralised video hosting platform. Conceivably, you could build something like this based on UNA. They’re using ActivityPub for federation. This protocol is still far from wide adoptio, but it is W3C-recommended, so we may implement it eventually.  

                        • What about this question:

                          "So with monetization, will we be able to put ads from any ad company into the player?"

                          Does Plyr allow any ads or only their own? Their ads might not work for everyone. I was just looking at their site at : https://www(dot)vi.ai/publisher-video-monetization/?aid=plyrio 

                          • it’s open source and mit licensed. We can surely use different ad codes. 

                            • Andrew Boon , Anton L , Alex T⚜️ , I think UNA should integrate thé protocol of federation ( ActivityPub )

                              With federation, sites could exchange Videos, Points/Coins, Products...etc

                              Best Regards

                              • Good news, but it looks like 10 are taking more and more weight, so what I hope is that it will be delivered on time and that it will not be necessary to go through a dozen beta version and that it is not in the end a gift of end of year.

                                • Just release something now to make us happy.

                                  • We may push a few things further to release v10 earlier, but ipgrada betas are unavoidable. 

                                    • Betas are not the problem is bug seriousness, if you gonna release something please make sure the major issues are taken care of

                                      • This is great news! Way to go Andrew and Team.

                                        Will Plyr require videos to be "processed" into multiple sizes (or formats) as does the current una video module?

                                        Shared servers usually cannot accomplish this video processing without a huge boost in resource usage.

                                        Can Plyr play on phones, tablets, and desktops if a single mp4 is manually uploaded via ftp?

                                               Thank you much!

                                        • There are a few ideas floating, but generally speaking - yes, the server has to create a few versions during conversion. Perhaps just 480p/720p/1080p is enough in most cases. We used to have to create multiple formats as well, but lately most browsers settled on MP4 for good, so we can drop that practice. 

                                          It is possible to setup an external video processing service to handle this.

                                          As for playback, Plyr is just an HTML5 player, so it would play in all modern browsers. 

                                          Playing an MP4 without conversion is possible in theory but not generally done. The catch is that apart from format and size a video has other properties like bitrate, protection, extension, compression algorithm, etc. It is not “safe” to rely on uploaded media original for reliable playback. The file can still be unplayable or too large for its length even if it’s an mp4. That’s the reason you see YouTube converting any source file. 

                                          About the only way to playback without conversion is when you control recording. For example in Messenger video recording is done in a format set by server, so we can play it as soon as it’s uploaded. 

                                          • Yes, I remember reading about the ingenious remote processing capability, baked into UNA. Maybe that is what I need.

                                            For now, our community just has a few short videos. I just upload them as Files.

                                            I was learning about setting up a Mac laptop as a remote server. It seemed a little more complicated than in Windows. I'll have to look at this process again.

                                            Videos are usually the largest files. I wish there was a 3rd party solution to process these videos. For those of us who self-host.

                                            Thank you for explaining everything, Andrew.

                                            • So if we want to only encode 720p, can we disable the other 480p and 1080p video versions? I would only like for one version to be encoded.

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