Posting self-hosted FLV's in wordpress

[geirlur]

I'm using one of these wordpress tubethemes and used to be able to play the videos that I posted. When trying to watch them now I either get a blank page, a video window which turns into a blank page when clicking play, or just the code for the video - depending on which code or plugin I'm using.

When this happens I post the code using "custom fields". When trying to add the code into the post itself using html view however the video shows up properly.

So I wondered if anyone else had experienced this? Or does anyone know how to fix it? My theory is that it stopped working when I upgraded wordpress..

[harvey]

Originally Posted by geirlur

My theory is that it stopped working when I upgraded wordpress..

and my theory is that you didn't add the player See, when you post remotely hosted videos, the site has its own FLV player, hence it works fine. However, if you want to play self-hosted FLV and you don't add a FLV player on your site, it will never work, because you're referencing something that doesn't exist.

In short, grab a player, follow the instructions to install it in your site and do the appropriate changes in your theme and it will work just fine

[geirlur]

Originally Posted by harvey

and my theory is that you didn't add the player

I don't think you read my whole post
The videos were working FINE before, now they just won't play anymore. I've tried adding the videos both with using a flashplayercode with the url to my flv and plugin to play flvs .

Also, the videos play fine when adding them in html view but I need to add them through "custom fields" to get the video to show up above the description and link to sponsor.

[harvey]

then the theme you're using needs to have its code changed (or the plugin you're using is outdated) . Hard to say without seeing it, but that's the exact description of the behavior of the FLV player not loaded in the page. As a matter of fact I had the same problem a couple weeks ago just because I forgot to upload the player, did it and it worked like a charm. Check out if there's some relative path that has changed or if your plugins are updated and working on 2.8.x (most plugins still aren't). If the problem is the plugin, your best bet is to downgrade to 2.7 and wait til the plugins are updated to work with 2.8. If the problem relies on the theme (for what you say, I'm quite sure that's where the problem is), just try to find out where's the part that brings the problem. As I said, without seeing the code it's impossible to say something accurate.

On a side note: most video themes I've seen are extremely weak and badly coded. If you feel confident and want to edit your theme so it ALWAYS work, do the following:

1) in your theme, replace the code for your video/s with the following:

<object width="640" height="360" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0">
<param name="quality" value="high">  <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> 
<param name="movie" value="http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvplay.swf"> 
<param name="FlashVars" value="&streamName=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD", $single = true); ?>&skinName=http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvskin&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true">  
<embed width="640" height="360" flashvars="&streamName=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD", $single = true); ?>&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true&skinName=http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvskin" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvplay.swf" wmode="transparent"> 
</embed>
</object>

2) be happy


the above can be modified to use JWPlayer and FlowPlayer with just a couple changes. I'm not sure if you can use dynamically loaded video with OS FLV (never tested it), but at most you'll need some editing.

PS: in the code above, you OBVIOUSLY need to edit some data, like size and maybe some flashvar or wmode