3 Great Plugins for Embedding Video on WordPress Post or Page

Q: How do I embed video on my website?

A: The answer to this question depends on who owns the video and where it is hosted. If it’s a video you’ve created, and you want to host it on your site, then you’ll want to convert the video file (whether it’s an .mov, .avi, or other format) to flash (.flv) and use a flash player plugin (see below) to embed the video on your blog post or page.

The Adobe Flash Video Encoder (or Adobe Media Encoder) can convert a variety of file formats to flv (Flash Video). MPEG Streamclip is a very powerful video converter program with options for resizing the video, sampling sound, etc. and exporting as flv.

Be sure to resize the video to the size you’ll display it online and use the appropriate video codec (H.264 or On2 VP6). See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/quickstart/video_encoder/ for some useful information about Flash and video encoding even if you’re not using the Adobe Media Encoder.

1. Hana Flv Player

This flash player has elegant, simple skins and many options for how to use them. A “short code” can be used to quickly insert the video into a post or page. Be sure to read the readme file that comes with the plugin and visit the plugin website for more configuration options.

Download here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hana-flv-player/

I used the minimal version of the Hana Flv player at AdvertusMedia.com. It works great framed in the div on top of a background image of a television:

2. vipers-video-quicktags

Vipers Video Quicktags embeds all kinds of video easily, including YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, and self-hosted Flash Video.

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Download here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/

3. WordTube

Alex Rabe’s awesome plugin makes it easy for you to manage a lot of different Flash files and insert them into your WordPress posts and pages. It uses the JW Player by LongTailVideo.com, which has many flash vars (settings) you can use to control the look of the player.
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Download here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordtube/

More: Embedding Video from Other Video Hosting Sites

If you’re want to embed videos from other video hosting sites, some plugins for that include:

WordPress Video Plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-video-plugin/
TubePress: http://www.tubepress.net/
As well as Viper’s Video Quicktags (see link above)

Filed Under: Plugins

Anonymous

Hi Gary! That’s an excellent question. If they are Vimeo, Vimeo provides a widget that allows you to display all the videos in this thumbnail rollover format: http://vimeo.com/widget. I am also using a pretty cool plugin on a client’s site that allows you to choose several videos and it randomly displays them in the sidebar: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/video-sidebar-widgets/

A couple others worth checking out:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/youtube-channel/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-video-pack/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-youtube-video-posts/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/

I use VidEmbed for standalone video on pages and sidebar:

http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/vidembed/
Gary

Angela, thanks! Very helpful as usual. The one you mentioned – Video Sidebar Widget – that displays random vids, evidently it doesn’t work too good if you have a caching plugin on your site; well at least that’s the warning given by the author. The VidEmbed looks to be the go for me. Ta.