Cool Player Plugin
Posted by Ken Cheung on Thursday, November 16, 2006 in Video, WordPress : : 51 comments[Update: Version 9 of CoolPlayer is out and you no longer need to use the hack mentioned in this post]
I've been playing with the Cool Player plugin for WordPress since yesterday. The plugin allows you to play multimedia files in your blog. I've only tested the plugin with mp3 and wmv (Windows Media Video) files, but the plugin is suppose to work with all of these types of files:
Google Video, Youtube Video, vSocial Video, ASF, ASX, WM, WMA, WMV, WAX, WVX, OGG, APE, AVI, MID, MIDI, WAV, SWF, SPL, MP3, FLV, RM, RMVB, RA, RV, RAM, SMIL, PDF, FDF, XFDF, XDP, XFD, MOV, QT, MQV, MPEG, MPG, M1S, M1V, M1A, M75, M15, MP2, MPM, MPV, MPA, FLC, FLI, CEL, RTSP, RTS, 3GP, 3GPP, 3G2, 3GP2, SDV, AMC, MP4, SDP, GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, XPM
The plugin is suppose to work with IE, Firefox, Opera, and other browsers. I can confirm it does work with IE, Firefox, and Opera.
A nice feature about the Cool Player is being able to specify more than one file at a time (see example below). In addition, a user can can enter a media url to play by double clicking the bottom of the player.
Here's an example of the Cool Player plugin configured with two files.
Captain America
Reason for Living
I must warn you that configuring the plugin is not as easy as other plugins. Why you ask? Because the plugin site is in Chinese. Funny in a way. I'm Chinese, but I can't read Chinese. It has been real fun trying to figure out how to use the plugin. Are you ready? OK, let's get started:
1. Download the plugin here (coolplayer.zip)
2. Uncompressed, upload the coolplayer folder to your plugin directory, and activate the plugin
3. Insert the player code into your post by modifying the code below. Feel free to change the width, height, autoplay, and loop. Note: If your file autoplays even when it is set to false, see Lewie Paine's comment below for a fix.
<coolplayer width="320" height="240" autoplay="false" loop="false">
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/blahblah.wmv">Your Video Title</a>
</coolplayer>
The plugin does not like single quotes in the title (ie - You're the Reason I'm Living) so don't use them. If you want to include more than one media file, just add another line between the coolplayer tags:
<coolplayer width="320" height="240" autoplay="false" loop="false">
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/filename.mp3">Your MP3 Title</a>
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/yourfolder/blahblah.wmv">Your Video Title</a>
</coolplayer>
By default, the player points to a RPC server in China. You can improve the performance by downloading the server to your own site:
[Update 2007.02.03: You can set the location of the RPC Server in the admin menu of the new version of CoolPlayer.]
1. Download coolplayer_rpc.zip from the plugin site
2. Uncompressed the files to your coolplayer folder
3. You need to change the location of the RPC server in two files: rpc.php and coolplayer.js
[Update 2006.12.21: The previous instruction was for v8.3. I included v8.5 below.]
Version 8.3
In coolplayer.js, change (around line #17) from:
coolplayer_rpc.use_service('http://coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/rpc.php');
To (line wrap not intentional):
coolplayer_rpc.use_service('http://yourdomain.com
/yourplugindirectory/coolplayer/rpc.php');
Version 8.5
In coolplayer.js, change (line #1) from:
coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/";
To (line wrap not intentional):
coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://yourdomain.com/yourplugindirectory/plugins/coolplayer/";
Version 8.3 and 8.5
In rpc.php, change (around line #11) from:
$coolplayer_rpcpath = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/mbstring.php";
To (line wrap not intentional):
$coolplayer_rpcpath = "http://yourdomain.com/your-plugin-directory/coolplayer/mbstring.php";
After you have modify the server entries, upload all of the RPC files to your server (you don't need to activate the RPC server). It might be easier to just upload the entire coolplayer again. You are now done configuring the files. Have fun.
very good.
What a pity that I didn't use WP.
a very useful WP plugin! Thank you very much!
????????????????????????????????
where do u put the rpc files? in the same folder as coolPlayer or somewhere else in the server?
it seems buggy on Safari and sometimes IE too.
I placed the rpc files in the same folder as the player. My problem with it is related to Bloglines. Anytime I edit or create a post, Bloglines reset the post with the coolplayer plugin as unread.
Exactly what I've been lookin for except for a couple of glitches…
even though I set autoplay="false", WMV video automatically starts. Any idea on this as I notice your example doesn't have this problem.
Also, I have not been able to change settings to make the player play from my server. You say, "In coolplayer.js, change (around line #17)…"
my .js file has nothing there. Instead I got…
(Line 1) coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/";
and
(Line 212) coolplayer_rpc.use_service(coolplayer_plugin_path + 'rpc.php');
Changing any of this to my URL doesn't work. Whether I put it all in line 1 or not. Any suggestions?
Thank you very much for any help that you might provide.
That's really odd because your file does not seem to match my file. Did you change the server location in one file or two files (coolplayer.js and rpc.php)?
As for autoplay not working, you might want to test it in different browsers and go from there.
the autoplay problem was a problem with Firefox. An extension to stop autoplay can be found here…
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1765/
Regarding the other problem, I did edit both files. Your instructions for rpc.php were right-on. I placed the rpc files in the same folder as the player. I downloaded the zipped file a couple of days ago. Could I have gotten a new version or even an older one? I downloaded from the author's site.
http://www.coolcode.cn/?p=100
Thanks for your prompt reply.
You are correct. The new version is 8.5. I was on 8.3. I made the changes to line 1 as you indicated and it appeared to work. but then when I edit the post to reflect the new version, the plugin no longer worked after I saved the post. Even when I went back to 8.3, the plugin still did not work. I'm going to play with it some more later this week and get back to you.
Odd thing is, the plugin still works on the previous post (at the bottom):
http://izachy.com/2006/11/15/youtube/
As noted before, this does not work…
Version 8.5
In coolplayer.js, change (line #1) from:
coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/";
To (line wrap not intentional):
coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://yourdomain.com/yourplugindirectory/plugins/coolplayer/";
…it simply causes coolplayer to stop working properly. I get this message instead.
This media can NOT be support to embed into the page,
but you can download it by the following link.
I get this with both FF and IE.
Could there be a third change to make?
Does it work if you point the rpc server to the one in China?
yes, it does work…could there be a third change to make?
I believe that the problem might be that I'm using a sub-directory. Whereas the default addy is…
coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/";
I'm trying to use…
coolplayer_plugin_path = "http://www.houseofpaine.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/";
I'm using 8.5 now. I've only had to make the two changes above. I did a search for coolcode.cn and I could only find it in the commented area of the script (after I made my changes). I'm also using a subdirectory for my wp install so my path is like the one you listed above.
I'm not sure if this is related to your problem, but I had two problems so far. The first one was because I commented something right before the the coolplayer tags in the post. After I removed the commented text, the plugin worked fine. This was the problem I had when I upgraded.
The other problem I had required inserting the 'more' tag before the coolplayer tag. When I didn't use the 'more' tag, sometimes the page would hang on the home page and also the post kept showing up as new in bloglines.
I'm using 8.5 and changed the lines in the js file and rpc file. When I'm adding a small piece of film to a post, Wordpress somehow strips the section out of the code. I've tried everything that I could come up with to fix this, but nothing seems to work.
Anyone any ideas?
Thanks.
I assume you are talking about the coolplayer tag parameters when you said WP is striping part of it. Can you list what was removed. Leave out the "" in the comments. I think WP will not display it if you include the real tags in the comments.
Try going to dashboard/users/profile and turn off the visual rich editor. It tends to strip out the embed tags. You can use the simple text editor just fine.
Is Lewie Paine using mac os x?
Can u develop a widget for mac?
The plugin is for WordPress. As far as I know, WP does not run on a Mac.
[...] I was looking to add some media content to my blog and I found coolplayer, but the installing information was in Chinese. I got lucky, as I found another site, so I pretty much copy/paste the text there [...]
Thanks for the tip on changing the RPC server. I got that working. I'm using it to play .3g2 files from my cell phone. I'm assuming that all this player does is let you show a video without having to plop in all of the custom embed codes for all of the seperate video plugins out there like quicktime and flash and wmv. In otherwords, if your visitor does not have the quicktime plugin installed. the coolplyer with the quicktime video embedded into it aint gonna work. Is this correct?
the phone tests
http://www.martoon.org/blog/?p=6
That is my understanding. I've only tested it in IE and Firefox so I don't how well it works on other platforms.
[...] more English Introduction: http://izachy.com/2006/11/16/cool-player-plugin/ ???? 1 2 3 [...]
[...] Después de volverme medio loco tras ver como dejaba de funcionar este plugin, me he decidido a instalar este otro Cool Player Plugin v 8.6, que al menos para mi, es mas "facil" de manejar, soy muy torpe. Tags:anarchy media player plugins wordpress wordpress wp wp extreme video [...]
[...] http://izachy.com/2006/11/16/cool-player-plugin/ [...]
CoolPlayer update to 9.0 now!
CoolPlayer 9.0 for WordPress allows you to play multimedia files in your blog.
The insert media not only support IE or windows browsers, but also support Firefox, Opera or other Linux/Unix browsers.
You can insert several mediae at one time and switch them to play with out reloading the page. it give you a download url following the media window. you can enter a media url to play when you double click the download bar. You can also hide this download bar to use download attribute in the coolplayer tag.
This version supports those types of files: rm, rmvb, ra, rv, ram, smil, smi, rtsp, rpm, asf, wm, wma, wmv, wax, wvx, ogg, ape, avi, mid, midi, wav, mms, m3u, asx, mov, qt, mqv, m4v, m4a, m4b, mpeg, mpg, m1s, m1v, m1a, m75, m15, mp2, mpm, mpv, mpa, flc, fli, cel, aiff, aif, aifc, cdda, bwf, rts, 3gp, 3gpp, 3g2, 3gp2, au, snd, ulw, smf, kar, qcp, sdv, gsm, amr, caf, amc, mp4, sdp, pdf, fdf, xfdf, xdp, xfd, gif, jpg, jpeg, bmp, png, xpm, dir, dxr, dcr, cst, cct, cxt, w3d, fgd, swa, swf, spl, mp3, flv, rtmp, rbs, xml, rss, xspf, atom.
This version also supports YouTube, Ifilm, VSocial, TuDou Video, Evil Chili, Wildko, Yikers Videos & Games, Red Balcony Videos & Games, Live Video, Odeo Audio, Revver, MetaCafe, MySpace, GoEar, Break, Stupid Videos, DailyMotion and Google Video.
This version is different from any previous version. This version supports Rich Text Editor, and adds the CoolPlayer button to the Text Editor & Rich Text Editor, it works well on WordPress 2.0 & 2.1+.
This version adds CoolPlayer options page. You can change any default options values on this page, and you can also change the CoolPlayer RPC Server URL, test validity of it and get the RPC Server version directly on this page.
More changes (Chinese) »
Download
CoolPlayer 9.0 for WordPress
CoolPlayer RPC Server 9.000
Installation
1. Download coolplayer.zip and extract it to the wordpress plugins directory (wp-content/plugins), and then activate it in administrator’s interface.
2. If you want to install the RPC Server in your website, you should check your web server supports php mbstring & sockets extension and can connect the other web site directly first. Then you can download a separate RPC Server coolplayer_rpc.zip and unzip it into the wordpress plugins directory (wp-content/plugins). And then change the default RPC Server to your RPC Server on the CoolPlayer options page in administrator’s interface. You can test validity of your RPC Server and get the RPC Server version directly on this page, too.
Usage
You can use the CoolPlayer Button to insert any multimedia in the Text Editor & Rich Text Editor. And you can also use the coolplayer tag directly in your post.
[...] andot: CoolPlayer update to 9.0 now! CoolPlayer 9.0 for WordPres… [...]
cheers for the great tool — really flexible…
regarding : "And then change the default RPC Server to your RPC Server on the CoolPlayer options page in administrator’s interface."
any chance of getting more explicit instructions for the non-coders among us?
thanks again…
In ver 9, you just enter the url for the location of the RPC server. No coding involved. There is a screen shot here:
http://izachy.com/2007/02/03/coolplayer-9/
Hi all,
Thanks for sharing this wonderful plugin.
I having some problem to play an asx file with the coolplayer plugin.
It can play a streaming media (mms://streamingServer/somedir/steamingfile) directly, but does not play the asx file which contains the mms url.
can somebody help me.
thanks for the support.
Sorry, I have not tried it with asx files.
are there any new updates to this cool player
I think ver 9 is the latest:
http://izachy.com/2007/02/03/coolplayer-9/
[...] http://izachy.com/2006/11/16/cool-player-plugin/ [...]
[...] medio loco tras ver como dejaba de funcionar este plugin, me he decidido a instalar este otro Cool Player Plugin v 8.6, que al menos para mi, es mas "facil" de manejar, soy muy [...]
Grrrrrr… installed coolplayer… followed all the instructions.
The only thing I can't find is a line pointing to the RPC server in the coolplayer.js … but should I?
Set the Coolplayer options to 320 x 240 (the size I export my .wmv videos)
Created those lines in my editor:
[coolplayer width="320" height="240" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="1" mediatype=""]
http://www.thestooms.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Ewie.wmv
[/coolplayer]
Guess it doesn't matter what directory I put my content in.. or does it have to be in the /wp-content/uploads ?
The thing is that I get the player on screen but it doesn't load teh content…
Anyone any suggestions!?
Thx,
TheStoom
huh… didn't expect it to work here either… so now I have the problem that I can see my son making this girl fall for him on this blog… but not on my own?????
Anyone?
TheStoom, the video does not need to be in the uploads directory. It can be in any directory you want as long as it matches the media url you use. The can use the admin interface in version 9 of the player to enter the rpc location. by default, it's pointed to the one in China. I'm not sure why it does not work on your site, but does work here. I have a post on the new version here:
http://izachy.com/2007/02/03/coolplayer-9/
in the previous commment i put dailymotion
urls but coolplayer says it supports but it is not working can any one help
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/
3OsmRr2LClC9×7w4D
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/
WUaycbHRUHhtA7wbm
Okay… I need a little help here. I have loaded coolplayer onto my site. I can see it in the dashboard… add the url of the mpg… but when I go to my site, I get the quicktime logo in place of the video. I will admit that I don't know much about any of this. Is this related to the rpc servers being discussed. (I wish I knew what rpc servers were!)
When I test my RPC servers on the options menu, it comes back and says it is valid and the version is 9.32. Would anyone be willing to help a girl out?
Do they make CoolPlayer for dummies? ;) I would certainly qualify.
Doesn't sound like a rpc problem. Is there a reason why you are using "ftp" intead "http" for the url of your video? I'm not sure if the plugin works with ftp instead of http. Just guessing here.
cool plugins.. it works great on my sites…
thx man.. and i look forward for ur next great plugins
This looks like a great plugin… but… I just can't get it working on my site. I did everything as stated in manual, but audio or video are not loading for me. (it showing "Loading…")
Im using RPC server on my site (it's testing OK) I even changed the the value of the string "$coolplayer_rpcpath" in rpc.php file to my site.
(default one is http://www.coolcode.cn/wp-content/plugins/coolplayer/mbstring.php).
I checked for typos and filw locations - no issues there… but still no joy.
Im using only pages in WP (sort of CMS) so I tested coolplayer on a post, but as mentioned before… no joy.
Did any of you guys came a cross the same problem?
I might sleep it over and try again tomorrow, hopefully I'll have eureka moment!!!
cheers
I only had that problem before I discovered the file names are case sensitive.
I am having the same problem.
for some reason if posting Youtube urls, the script is showing Loading… only and is not displaying any flash files not even the local embedded flash streamer that came with the script.
No idea - unless there is a typo or a problem with the rpc server you are using.
is there any way to use coolplayer9 for normal site ?
Not unless someone has written a widget for the WordPress plugin.
Hi,
may I know how to play this kind of file extension ==> file.aspx
thanks
Sorry, don't know.